And some grammarians don't treat progressive(continuous)tenses as tenses but as aspects of the main tenses. Also, some question the need to treat "will" as a "future tense". They see it as a modal verb only, with particular meanings, a few of which are connected with the future. So it's a question of perspective, really.

In my mind, we have 3 basic tenses as well. But… we ALSO have variations of these same tenses. We like to give these various names, so I suppose it appears there are many tenses in English. 1. Present -simple present---I do -present perfect--- I have (simple present) done -present progressive---I am (simple present) doing -present perfect progressive--- I have (simple present) been doing 2. Past -simple past--- I did -past perfect---I had (simple past) done -past progressive---I was (simple past) doing -past perfect progressive--- I had (simple past) been doing 3. Future -simple future---I will do -future perfect--- I will have (simple future) done -future progressive---I will be (simple future) doing -future perfect progressive--- I will have (simple future) been doing *Conditional--similar to the future, except it is based on a condition. (will vs. would) Now…. “why that is” also depends on how English and Russian are different. As I am not an expert on Russian (and certainly do not understand the language), I would be interested to know what a Russian speaker thinks about this. For example "Is there anything in Russian that expresses that something is currently in progress, etc. (present progressive, etc.)?" Source: myself, American English