Russian grammar · the case system
The accusative case in Russian
кого? что? Direct object, direction
The accusative marks the direct object: the thing the action lands on. It also marks direction after в and на, and it hides the famous animacy twist: animate nouns borrow their genitive form in the accusative.
Aurélien CuvelierAug 10, 2026The endings, with a declined example per ending
| Masculine | = nom / = gen* | стол · музей · словарь |
|---|---|---|
| Feminine | -у / -ю | сестру · неделю |
| Neuter | = nom | окно · море |
| Plural | = nom / = gen* | столы · словари · окна |
The personal pronouns in this case
| я | меня |
|---|---|
| ты | тебя |
| он | его |
| она | её |
| оно | его |
| мы | нас |
| вы | вас |
| они | их |
When to use it
The direct object
читать книгу (read a book), видеть друга (see a friend): друг is animate, so its accusative looks like the genitive.
Direction with в and на
Movement into or onto takes the accusative: иду в школу (I am going to school), едем на море (we are going to the sea).
Time expressions
каждый день (every day), всю ночь (all night): stretches and repetitions of time stand in the accusative.
In a real sentence
Она читает интересную книгу. She is reading an interesting book.
Watch out
Two traps live here. Animacy: masculine animate nouns borrow the genitive form as their accusative, so you see a table (вижу стол) but you see a brother (вижу брата). And direction versus location: в Москву (accusative) means to Moscow, while в Москве (prepositional) means in Moscow; the case is the only thing telling motion from position.
The other cases
- The nominative case in Russian
- The genitive case in Russian
- The dative case in Russian
- The instrumental case in Russian
- The prepositional case in Russian
All six cases on one page, with the full chart ›The Russian grammar map: where the cases fit in the whole system ›Download this chart as a free printable PDF (A4) ›
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Written by
Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck
Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck, the app that teaches Russian and French words in context. Each course follows the official proficiency word lists and a frequency corpus for its language, and every word comes with real, annotated example sentences.
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