Is it easier to learn L2 that is similar to L1?

LEARNER`S PROFILE:
For my case study, I have chosen my friend Khusnora Khudjamova who is an MA student at National University in Tashkent now. She is specialized in the Russian language and has always had a desire to acquire English with a native-like proficiency. Khusnora is 25 years old and she earned her Bachelor`s Degree last year. She is a very hardworking, ambitious, and motivated girl. She is a fast learner and takes education very seriously. She is bilingual. She is fluent in Russian and Uzbek languages and learning English nowadays. Regarding her interest in acquiring a new language, I can say that she has always been ahead of her classmates in English. Initially, she started learning for her satisfaction at an early age. It was about 10 years ago when teachers used the Grammar Translation Method in their classes. She used to learn words by heart and translate sentences from one language into another. Moreover, Khusnora used to sing songs in English and read texts to pronounce words correctly. As she mentioned classes were only teacher-centered and less attention was given to students` communicative skills. No listening tasks were provided during the sessions and the skill that she was able to develop was reading skill and to some extent vocabulary. After a couple of years, she intended to acquire it for academic purposes and begun taking intensive English classes. As time changed the methods were different and the teaching process was more effective than it used to be in the past. Intensive courses that she attended were taught in a completely different way. She said that she could feel the English atmosphere which motivated her greatly. Teachers frequently kept English during the whole class and had discussion activities with their students. Almost every Saturday they watched American movies with subtitles to develop both listening and speaking skills. As she said, initially it was challenging to understand native speakers but after watching the same movie for the second time she was able to comprehend in some percentage. Skills that she was able to improve were listening and reading rather than writing and speaking skills. After gaining a high level of English she decided to take IELTS classes and could enhance her knowledge to some extent. Some skills she has already developed quite well in a short time and I would like to figure out whether her L1 namely Russian is similar to her L2 which is English. Also what challenges she faced while studying English and what common characteristics are there between Russian and English languages.