Thanks Justin for GMing, you did a great job.
As for the game, It's hard to understand the reason for Russia's glorifying himself for his Solo.This was more of a joint Italian / Russian cooperation in order to get the Solo for Russia.
It does appear as if the Italian was playing for one purpose - to get a solo for Russia.
Italy conceded his SC (at least 6 SC in 2 turns ) to Russia and instead of trying to fight Russia had been trying to help him even more.   Go figure.

As it was more of a joint Italian / Russian solo  -  congratulations for both Simon and Doug for achieving it. 
--Isaac

BTW it turned out that there was a fake email address pretending to be that of Italy, with which I had made quite a lot of dipping, till this day I'm not sure if this email address was Russia or Italy after all. 

However this put together with the way Italy was playing made me wonder if there is an Italian player at all.