Reading in Russian

Cyrillic is a wall that turns out to be a low one. It is 33 letters, many of them shared with the Latin alphabet, and most learners can decode simple words within a few days. It feels like the obstacle because it is the visible one.

Once you can read the letters, Russian spelling is fairly regular — considerably more so than English. Words are largely written as they sound, with predictable exceptions.

The genuine difficulty is grammatical. Russian has six cases, so nouns change their endings depending on their role in the sentence, and there are no articles at all — no "a", no "the". Reading is how you build a feel for which ending means what, because a table of six cases teaches you far less than a hundred pages of seeing them used.

Some letters are false friends

Р is r, С is s, В is v, Н is n, У is u. The letters that look most familiar are the ones most likely to trip you, so learn those first.

No articles at all

There is no word for "a" or "the". Context does that work, which reads as terse at first and becomes natural quickly.

Stress is unmarked and it matters

Russian stress moves around and is not written in ordinary text. This is the strongest argument for reading with audio rather than reading alone.