Step 1: find a way to get to A1 level. At that level you need to know about 300 to 500 of the most common words. The way I learned those was through a course that a friend of mine created for Russian learners. You can buy the course but I think that it's not worth it unless you can find an Italki tutor who will teach you the language live (the course that he sells is mainly a recording from the lessons).
Here is a good list of all the words you should know at that level: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r-KhbVlFj2XtiJSoQuHuoHvhqnvsONj-gdG3TlDy49k/edit?usp=sharing
Duolingo might be able to teach you all those words, but in my experience Duolingo has a lot of weird sentence constructions, useless vocab (animal names, really? Don't learn useless nouns at the beginning) and you can't properly practice pronunciation because there is no human feedback.
The alphabet is easy, but be mindful of the fact that Russian is a stressed language just like English, and there is really no way to predict where the stress falls. Getting the stress wrong is a bigger sin in Russian than in English.
So at this stage, do what you want as long as you can be consistent with that method.
Step 2: YouTube
Once you reach level A1, what you can do becomes a bit clearer: watch YouTube videos with subtitles. The good thing about Russian compared to other Slavic languages is that there are TONS of amazing YouTube channels with comprehensible content. It's absolutely incredible. Here is a list of some of them that I found useful at levels A2-B1:
In Russian From Afar (A1-A2):
https://www.youtube.com/c/InRussianFromAfar
Tatiana Klimova (A1-A2):
https://www.youtube.com/c/RussianLanguagePodcast/videos
She has also organized her content on her website: https://russianpodcast.eu/
In addition sh has a podcast with tons of episodes and transcripts (paid), which should become comprehensible around A2/B1 level.
As an example you watch this video which is great around level A1-A2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukom0cqND8Q
Russian with Max (A2-B1):
At level A2, you can also start watching Max's videos on the channel "Russian with Max". He has videos at various levels (A2-C1) but he really excels at doing good A2 videos where he pronounces every word very clearly. This is of course a bit artificial, but as you progress through the language you can watch his other videos where he speaks faster and more naturally. He also has a podcast with tons of episodes (at various levels, up to B2/C1). Almost all of them have a transcript and a list with the difficult vocabulary. You can listen to the episodes for free but you have to pay if you want access to the supplementary materials. The good thing is that you can buy a lifetime membership, which is better than a monthly subscription in my opinion.
Russian Progress (B1-B2):
Once you're at level B1, I can also highly recommend Artyom Nazaroff's channel: