На столе стоит телефон, и рядом с ним лежит мой кошелёк.

Because the sentence is talking about location, not movement.

With на, Russian uses different cases depending on the meaning:

• на стол = onto the table or to the table when something moves there
• на столе = on the table when something is already there

So стол changes to столе because it is in the prepositional case after на for location.

Yes, стоять literally means to stand, but Russian often uses position verbs where English would simply use is.

So instead of just saying the phone is on the table, Russian often describes its position more specifically:

• стоит = is standing
• лежит = is lying
• висит = is hanging

In this sentence, the phone is presented as something standing on the table. That can sound natural in Russian, especially for objects imagined as upright or set in place.

If you were thinking of a mobile phone lying flat, лежит телефон could also be possible in another context.

Because a wallet is normally imagined as lying on a surface, not standing upright.

So Russian chooses лежать for that image:

• На столе лежит кошелёк = A wallet is lying on the table

This is one of the common differences between English and Russian: Russian often pays attention to the physical position of the object.

Because рядом is commonly used with с plus the instrumental case.

So:

• рядом с телефоном = next to the phone
• рядом с ним = next to it / next to him

Here ним is the instrumental singular form of the pronoun.

So the structure is:

• рядом с + instrumental

It refers to телефон.

So рядом с ним means next to it, with it = the phone.

Technically, both стол and телефон are masculine nouns, so a learner might wonder if ним could mean the table. In practice, context makes телефон the natural meaning here: the wallet is lying next to the phone.

Because in the present tense, Russian usually omits the verb to be.

English says:

• The phone is on the table

Russian often says something more like:

• On the table stands a phone

So there is no separate present-tense word for is here. This is completely normal in Russian.

Yes, you could, but it means something slightly different in tone.

• На столе стоит телефон describes the scene and the phone’s position.
• На столе есть телефон emphasizes existence/presence: There is a phone on the table.

So the original sentence sounds more natural for simple description, while есть is more useful when you want to stress that something is present.

Because мой has to agree with кошелёк in gender, number, and case.

Кошелёк is:

• masculine
• singular
• nominative here, because it is the subject of лежит

So the correct form is мой.

Compare:

• мой кошелёк = my wallet
• моя сумка = my bag
• моё письмо = my letter

Because Russian has no articles.

So телефон can mean:

• a phone
• the phone

The exact meaning depends on context.

In this sentence, English might translate it with a or the depending on the situation, but Russian does not need to mark that explicitly.

Yes, but not because another order would be ungrammatical. Russian word order is fairly flexible, and this order helps shape the flow of information.

• На столе стоит телефон starts with the place: on the table
• then introduces what is there: a/the phone
• и рядом с ним лежит мой кошелёк adds another item in relation to the phone

This sounds natural because it builds the scene step by step.

If you changed the word order, the meaning would stay similar, but the emphasis would shift.

Yes.

Ё is pronounced like yo, and it always carries stress. So кошелёк is pronounced with stress on the last syllable.

In many everyday Russian texts, ё is often written as е, so you may see кошелек. But the pronunciation is still кошелёк.

For learners, it is helpful to remember the ё, because it tells you both the sound and the stress.