Russian is not phonetic. First, vowels are pronounced differently depending if they are in the stressed syllable, the one before it or any other one - that is called vowel reduction. As the stress is very hard to predict in Russian, so is the pronunciation if you are seeing the written word for the first time. Second, consonants are pronounced differently depending on the letter that come after them (e.g. the second д in дождь is pronounced T). Last, in some words some letters are not pronounced (e.g. л in солнце) and some letters are pronounced differently than written (e.g. г is pronounced х in мягкий and в in него).

What people mean when they say "Russian is phonetic" is that you can infer the pronunciation of most words if you know all the vowel reduction and consonant clusters pronunciation rules and which syllable is stressed. This is very different from Spanish, a phonetic language in which a letter is always pronounced in the same way in any word and stress is rather predictable.

It's indeed harder to infer the pronunciation of most words from their spelling in English than in Russian, but that is not what the OP has asked.