A Slavonic Cyrillic prototype of Russian, based on the Greek alphabet, appeared in the 9th Century. The original version was developed by Byzantian theologian Kirill, and used until 1708, when Tsar Peter I introduced a modified series. In 1918, it was further simplified by the elimination of mute letters, giving us this modern version of 33 characters, 11 of which are vowels: ah, yeh, yoh, e, i, o, oo, ie, eh, u and yah.

Hear Muscovite Academy of Sciences Scholar Natasha Bulashova pronounce this alphabet.

All Russian R's (the letter P in cyrillic) are trilled on the tongue.  Also, the Russian H (the cyrillic X) has a soft simultaneous "k" sound.  Heed the capitalized pronunciations, as they designate STRESS in Russian pronunciation, which is a great deal stronger and more emotional than most other languages.