Even with bad news there is good news: there is a lot to learn from it. Russian news articles are excellent teaching material, even for the more advanced student.

Learn spoken Russian while also getting to know some Russians. From a rocker and a tennis player to Dmitri at the disco and the average Joe. Educational and entertaining: these are the most useful and fun interviews на русском.

What kind of times do we live in? It’s a question one might ask these days. To get an answer in Russian (or to distract yourself from the times), let’s start by learning the names of the months and days. Here they are gathered together, with a bonus of some etymology and grammar thrown in.

From earlier (2017) and corona-free, here’s an analysis by Anna Cher (Russian from the Heart) of a short excerpt from a TV interview. Putin talks about social media and the common practice of operating under a pseudonym.

As easy as it was with the first case, it becomes that much more complicated with the second. The genitive or родительный падеж is challenging in several areas. It is the most used and versatile, but also the most complex.

Every noun in Russian is masculine, feminine, or neuter. You always need to know which category it falls into, and usually, that’s not difficult. Words ending in a consonant are masculine, words ending in а or я are feminine, and words ending in о or е are neuter.