Аннотация:The article contains the first results of online education of foreignstudents with various levels of competence in the Russian language (mainlyin conditions of the Russian educational environment). On the exampleof teaching non-native learners with a philological and non-philological focusin a new distant working mode caused by the pandemic, the defined pros andcons of education in a new educational reality are analyzed. Communicative andexpressive powers of online and offline education in teaching Russian as a foreignlanguage are viewed in this context.