HI,

The Foreign Service Institute of the United States has determined that it takes about 1100 hours of study to reach fluency in Russian. If you're willing to study 3 hours every day, it could take you a year to reach that level. Let's assume that your learning goal is to speak conversational Russian with a group of friends/colleagues.

If you use the learning materials that help you start speaking, you will be able to :

- Understand and use a few essential phrases in 1-2 months (far beyond just "privet", for sure)

- Be able to make a very basic conversation in Russian in 2-3 months;

- Express most of your ideas using simple vocabulary in 4-6 months;

- Get to the intermediate level of listening, speaking, and writing in 8-12 months.

- Get to near-native level in 1-2 years.

That is all subject to using Russian daily. How much time to spend on that, that is up to you. I would recommend at least 30 min. or more. This will help you make progress.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.