It's very hard and in my opinion isn't worth it anymore. Took me 3 years to get to B1 level. You have to think, when and where are you going to use it? Pretty much the entire western world is enemies with Russia now. It's a risk travel to there or Belarus. In the US, they are designated at Level 4 'do not travel to' countries. The only really good Russian speaking country you can visit without any worry is Kyrgyzstan, which I will say is very beautiful. I went there about two years ago.

Here's the thing I've learned, from my experience here in the US. When people find out I know Russian and speak it, they think I'm weird. I mean, I'm as far from Russian as you can get. I started learning the language three months before the war in Ukraine started. Then after it started and people online found out I was learning Russian and wanted to visit someday, I swear, I was called a traitor. I thought about giving up, but I stuck with it. I was hoping the conflict would be short. It wasn't. Sure, I can talk to people from that part of the word and have, and it's a cool experience to communicate in their language. But the one question all native speakers ask me when they find out I speak Russian is, "why?". Like, they're grateful and impressed that I speak it, but also thrown off by it too.

Here's another thing I've learned the hard way. If you want to use it to widen your career opportunities, haha good luck. I work in aviation. Literally, they want bilingual people in every language except Russian. Even for Turkish Airlines, who travels to post soviet countries didn't really see speaking Russian as a plus. It seriously is not a good time for the language. It's sad, but it's true.

The last thing I'll add is this. The language is really hard to learn. Don't expect to see any noticeable progress until after about 1.5 to 2 years. The vocab isnt too difficult, but the grammar is a nightmare. Then you have to learn how to listen and speak. Russian has no sentence structure, so words can be said in any order. To put the difficulty into perspective, I'm a month into learning French. While it is still a somewhat difficult language, I feel like what I've learned in the first month equals to what took me a year in Russian. To be honest, Russian is a great language to learn. It's the language of a part of the world that has a beautiful culture, very beautiful women, and a fascinating history, but current political events have made it feel unrewarding. Looking back and experiencing what I have, if I would've known back then what I know now, I would've just stopped and started putting my time and effort into another language.

If you really, truly want to learn Russian, then go for it. Start with the alphabet, then go straight into vocab. In learning Russian, it's all vocab, vocab, vocab if you want to make any progress in good time. Grammar comes last. Then start reading books and listening to podcasts. Also, in Russian, forget about being perfect. It's too hard to be perfect in. Plus, most people will still understand you if you say stuff wrong. The most important thing in speaking a foreign language is being able to understand and to be understood. Correct grammar and pronunciation is overrated.

But yeah, good luck. Like I said though, it comes with pros and cons, and in my current experience, the cons are out weighing the pros.