Learning Russian in the current climate

[Pythian]

I started learning Russian a couple of years ago as something to do during lockdown. I was only planning to get good enough to read it, but I then got really into the language and decided I wanted to get better at writing and speaking it too, so I started having lessons with a teacher. This is someone who's been in the UK for 30+ years now, so she's been here for longer than she lived in Russia.

I'm not pro-Russia in any way, I just love the literature from the Tsarist era and was hoping to get good enough to read some of it in the original. I'm very aware of Russia's long history of problematic behaviour and I don't personally think that knowing the language is supportive of that. But I feel a bit like it's just a dodgy thing to do at the moment and I'm definitely not telling people about it. My teacher is very upset about what's happening in Ukraine and is worried about being condemned for it. I don't want to add to that by stopping my lessons and anyway, I enjoy them.

Would you judge someone in my position?

Crikey, I'd forgotten about this thread. I started off on Duolingo, which was good for learning vocab and basic phrases, but I found the lack of explanation of grammar content frustrating. I then bought some second hand textbooks from Amazon and worked my way through them, and after that, I took some online Zoom classes with a language school. That bit was to get a better feel for pronunciation, which is difficult to do from reading alone. I still don't have fluency but I can read it pretty well!