Italy bounced back from defeat against Ireland with a 13-try display in an 85-15 win over Russia on the Adriatic coast.
Russia had a task on their hands from the off but managed to get the first points of the game on the board in under five minutes courtesy of a Ramil Gaisin penalty.
That lead did not last for very long though and within a couple of minutes Luca Morisi profited from the persistence of Jake Polledri and dotted the ball down for the first Italian try of the evening.
Polledri was the architect of the second try too after finding an opening in the Russian defence and passing to Tito Tebaldi in support, who then offloaded to Sergio Parisse to run the ball in. Tommaso Allan successfully added the extras for the second time.
Not willing to go down without a fight, Russia orchestrated a try of their own through Kirill Golosnitskiy, bringing the scores back to 14-8 but a quick-fire Mattia Bellini double soon saw the gap widen.
Matteo Minozzi and Jayden Howard provided two further scores to make it a 30-point half time lead for the Azzurri.
Just two minutes after the restart, the onslaught continued as fly-half Allan registered a try of his own before dusting himself down and slotting another conversion between the posts.
Both sides began to ring the changes but once the players had settled down it was the turn of Simone Ferrari to get his name on the scoresheet.
More changes saw Parisse and Allan make way and Carlo Canna enter the fold to try and influence play.
Replacement Edoardo Padovani touched down either side of a second try for Minozzi as Italy entered the 60-point territory.
All that was left was for Minozzi to complete his hat-trick with five minutes remaining, Bogdan Fedotko to run in Russia’s second try of the evening and Canna to dot down a try before adding to the handful of conversions he already had against his name.
