With learning new vocabulary, I usually look for:

Anything in the word that looks like something I know, root, stem.
Then from familiar Russian roots/stems or words with different prefixes & suffixes.

From known patterns like город град/ж pairs, солодь слад etc.

By association with other Indo-European roots/words мёд => mel-.

By humor, or homophony, or other similarity: жалобы => jalopy, an old vehicle that is all complaints.

For memorization, I try to have normal, typical or set phrases that incorporate the new word/s. Or use something like a stock phrase of a character, like a Benderism. 'Заседание продолжается, господа присяжные!'

And a very important method of memorizing new vocabulary is song. Songs that contain new vocab 'unitize' or incorporate new vocab in a package that ties in the new vocab. Sing to remember.