Пожарный спасает ребёнка.

Because ребёнка is the direct object of the verb спасает.

• ребёнок = nominative singular, used for the subject
• ребёнка = accusative singular

For animate masculine nouns in Russian, the accusative singular usually looks like the genitive singular. So:

• ребёнок → subject: Ребёнок спит. = The child is sleeping.
• ребёнка → object: Пожарный спасает ребёнка. = The firefighter is saving the child.

This is a very common pattern in Russian.

• Пожарный is in the nominative case because it is the subject.
• ребёнка is in the accusative case because it is the direct object.

So the structure is:

• Пожарный = who is doing the action
• спасает = the action
• ребёнка = who is receiving the action

That is a great question, because it really does look like an adjective.

Пожарный originally comes from an adjective related to fire, but in modern Russian it is also commonly used as a noun, meaning firefighter.

So in this sentence, пожарный means a firefighter, not just fire-related.

You may also see:

• пожарный = male firefighter
• пожарная = female firefighter

Russian often turns adjective forms into nouns like this.

Спасает is present tense, third person singular.

It comes from the verb спасать = to save.

So:

• я спасаю = I save / am saving
• ты спасаешь = you save / are saving
• он / она спасает = he / she saves / is saving

In this sentence, спасает can mean either:

• saves
• is saving

Russian present tense often covers both simple present and present continuous, depending on context.

Because спасает is from the imperfective verb спасать, while спасёт is from the perfective verb спасти.

• спасает = is saving / saves
• спасёт = will save

Russian verbs often come in aspect pairs:

• спасать = imperfective, focuses on process or repeated action
• спасти = perfective, focuses on completion

So:

• Пожарный спасает ребёнка. = The firefighter is saving the child.
• Пожарный спасёт ребёнка. = The firefighter will save the child.

Ё is pronounced like yo in yonder.

So ребёнка is pronounced approximately:

ri-BYON-ka

The stress falls on -ён-.

A very important point: in many Russian texts, ё is often written as е, even though the pronunciation is still ё. So you may sometimes see ребенка, but it is still understood as ребёнка.

That means learners need to be careful, because е and ё are not pronounced the same.

A rough English-style pronunciation would be:

pa-ZHAR-ny spa-SA-yet ri-BYON-ka

Stress:

• пожа́рный
• спаса́ет
• ребёнка

A slightly more detailed guide:

• Пожарный ≈ pa-ZHAR-nyy
• спасает ≈ spa-SA-yet
• ребёнка ≈ ri-BYON-ka

No. Ребёнок means child and does not specify gender.

So ребёнка here could mean:

• a boy
• a girl
• just the child, without saying which

If Russian wants to be more specific, it could use:

• мальчика = boy
• девочку = girl

Because Russian has no articles like a or the.

So Пожарный спасает ребёнка can mean:

• The firefighter is saving the child
• A firefighter is saving a child

Context tells you which meaning is intended.

This is one of the biggest differences from English.

Yes. Russian word order is more flexible than English because the cases show the grammatical roles.

The neutral order here is:

• Пожарный спасает ребёнка.

But other orders are possible, for example:

• Ребёнка спасает пожарный.
• Спасает пожарный ребёнка.

These can change the focus or emphasis, but the basic meaning stays similar because:

• пожарный is still nominative
• ребёнка is still accusative

So Russian uses word order more for emphasis than English does.

Sometimes yes, but only if the subject is already clear from context.

Russian often omits subjects when they are understood. However, in this sentence, if you say only Спасает ребёнка, it means roughly Is saving the child, but it does not explicitly say who is doing it.

So:

• Пожарный спасает ребёнка. = clear and complete
• Спасает ребёнка. = possible in context, but less explicit

It is singular.

You can tell partly from the verb:

• спасает = he/she saves, singular
• plural would be спасают = they save

So:

• Пожарный спасает ребёнка. = The firefighter is saving the child.
• Пожарные спасают ребёнка. = The firefighters are saving the child.

Here пожарные would be plural.