Well I have found literally dozens of "learn Russian for free" websites and pedagogical aids, that were not available in the 1970s when we didn't have internet. I am not the best person to suggest what would most help a beginning Russian student, but what I needed is a refresher course with lots of audio dialogs and something to broaden my vocabulary and improve my grammar, having studied Russian for a total of 5 years spanning some high school and some college, a very long time ago. I found a ton of sites where you can assess your vocabulary, grammar knowledge, etc. then select whatever kind of learning aids would help you come up to speed. Dialogs, videos, audio, vocabulary drill, flash cards, grammar exercises, dictionaries, reading comprehension, etc. Actually I haven't found a single bad one yet – so use a search engine and dig in!
If you're a beginner, you will want to learn the Russian alphabet first – which is totally phonetic (unlike English), making that part of your chore simple. Do not try to learn Russian without learning the Cyrillic letters in which it is written. Then you'll want to hear Russian voices, male and female, speaking very clearly and slowly while you follow along the Russian text. Listen and repeat.
Russian is a highly inflected language with 3 genders. Nouns have 6 cases. Verbs and adjectives are also inflected. Admittedly, this takes some getting used to. Like every language I've encountered, there are some irregularities that must be memorized.
When reading Russian text out loud, there is no way to know which syllable should receive the stress accent. If you find a website that marks stress accents for the learner, that will help a bit. (Accents are not normally marked in written Russian text.)
Russian is a beautiful, expressive language. Go for it!
RussianstudentAnon