This is the Letter P

I have finally managed to learn the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet. My question is why can’t you use the letter P as the letter P. Example a) in the picture above shows the letter P on the left, in most of the western world this letter has the sound “puh”; in Ukrainian it has the sound “ruh”. The symbol to the left that resembles two capital I’s squashed together, that has the sound “puh.” Look at example b). If you thought the letter on the right has the sound “huh” you would be incorrect. That letter has the sound “nuh”; the little gallows pole to the left has the sound “huh”.
Why should this matter to me? After all, a person can learn to speak a foreign language without learning to read it. Except in my case. I have really poor hearing, caused by a combination of repeated ear infections, a family disposition towards hearing loss, and attending too many Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd concerts during my formative years. I can hear sounds, but if I don’t watch a person’s face while they are speaking to me, what they say and what I ear can be two completely different things.
As an example, last Yom Kippur, the rabbi, who is from Israel, and sometimes does not enunciate his English carefully, made the following statement: “On Yom Kippur, we are all like jellybeans!” Now in fairness to myself, I was not the only person who mistook the words “angelic beings,” for jellybeans, but everyone else realized right away what he actually said and I was sitting there for a good fifteen minutes with the following thoughts: “Wow, how are we like jellybeans? Are we all regular jellybeans or are we different flavors? Are we the really exotic jellybeans like Bertie Botts? Man, I hope I’m not one of those disgusting flavors, like mold, or vomit.”
So, for me to understand language tapes and speak the language properly, I have to have read the words first. Otherwise we could all end up as a bowl of candy.