A focused first week in Russian builds Cyrillic literacy solidly before touching the case system or verb aspect — both of which deserve full attention once reading is comfortable.
Focus entirely on the 33 letters (see Russian Alphabet), specifically flagging letters that look like familiar Latin letters but sound different (В, Н, Р, and others) to avoid silent mispronunciation habits.
Start sounding out short common words, noting where stress falls (looking it up, since it isn't marked in normal text) and marking it yourself in your notes.
Learn 20–30 common words in their nominative (dictionary) form, with gender noted, and try a few of Russian's copula-free present-tense sentences ("I [am] a student" needs no verb).
See also the reference page: Russian for Beginners.
Cyrillic letter recognition, with special attention to letters that look like familiar Latin letters but sound different — avoiding silent mispronunciation habits early matters more than speed.
Because stress placement significantly affects pronunciation (through vowel reduction), building the habit of looking up and marking stress yourself from the first week prevents later guesswork.
No practice needed there specifically — Russian typically omits the verb "to be" in the present tense entirely, so simple sentences like "I [am] a student" require no verb at all.
No — prioritize print letter recognition first; cursive, which looks notably different from print in Russian, is better introduced once print reading feels solid.