I'm a Chinese. In China, Russian was ever the most popular foreign language (even more than English) in about 1950-1970. Cyrillic alphabet seems very elegantly, differs greatly from Latin alphabet, in my opinion, it might have similar difficulty score to Arabic or Greek, I mean that, those learners, who have no basic knowledge of Russian, would probably spend the same time and energy on Russian just as Arabic takes, and if it were an exaggeration, at least, Russian is more difficult than German, in terms of alphabet, grammar, & pronunciation.
BTW, Russian girls look pretty, tall, and sexy......hahaha......