Language Facts: 

• The Cyrillic alphabet is straightforward and simple. Many letters will be familiar to the Latin alphabet, even though some don’t correspond to the same sound. However, most learners won’t have much trouble with the writing system. 
• Russian has very minimal dialectal difference, and the Russian spoken in Belarus will be easily understood in Siberia or Kazakhstan. 
• Russian phonology is very much based on palatized and un-palatized consonants, indicated by the following vowel. Familiarizing yourself with these differences is a important step to understanding Russian phonology 
• Nouns have three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and six noun cases. The “dual” number lingers on in some cases. 
• Adjectives precede the noun, and also agree with the noun in gender and case 
• Russian has a formal and an informal you, and like French, the formal you is the same as the plural. 
• Most verbs have a base perfective and imperfective form. 
• Verbs of motion (eg, “go”) are much more complicated than Western European languages, being classified based on method of movement (on foot vs. by transport), path, and direction .
• Base word order is Subject-Verb-Object, but because of the complex declension system, word order is flexible.