The past few weeks and months have been monumental for Russian rugby with qualification won for a first ever Rugby World Cup in 2011 and the boost of Sevens' acceptance into the Olympics, and it is with a combined sense of optimism and nervous excitement that the country's Sevens team arrives in Hong Kong.

"To qualify for the Rugby World Cup is absolutely enormous for us," said the Union's Chief Executive, Howard Thomas.

"To get across the line in the European Nations Cup I would say is the hardest route to qualify for the World Cup for tier two countries.

"In Sevens, we're going to be under huge pressure to perform in the Olympic sports - you've seen the reaction of President Medvedev on Russia's performance in the Winter Olympics (Medvedev demanded that Russian sports officials step down after the country won 15 medals, three gold, at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver).

"So the pressure for us to qualify for Rio and then perform will be great."

When Russia first qualified for next year's World Cup it was still unsure which pool they would compete in, but their 36-8 loss to Georgia at the weekend means that they travel to New Zealand as 'Europe 2' and face Australia, Ireland and Italy as well as a mouthwatering tie against the USA.

While 2011 may arrive too early for the Russians to be truly competitive in the 15-man game, they have already showed themselves to be quick learners in Sevens.

In fact, with Sevens' emergence as the most exciting new addtion to the Olympic family, one of the key questions facing Russia is how they will manage the duel growth of both forms of the game.

Pressure to perform at the Olympics

"I think we recognised early that we needed to get the support and the money into the sport of Rugby, not any one part of the Game, so we ensured that the agreements with our National Olympic Committee are for Rugby, not just for Sevens," said Thomas.

"We're lucky that we have significant government support for rugby in Russia, the Sports Minister understands the power and popularity of Rugby on the big stage and he wants us to be a major rugby nation in both forms of the sport.

"As a governing body we are focused on 15s, it's our primary form, but equally we do realise that Sevens is going to be an extremely fast-growing part of the sport and indeed in a country like ours the easier sport to get into development because it's the cheapest form to play, it's the easiest to understand and it can probably be played by people longer into their sporting lives than 15s can.

"It also works very much for us with the women's game. We're good at Sevens among our women players, we're not so strong at 15s yet, but we've got aspirations to be a very strong women's team too."

In the men's game, the country is boosted by a relatively strong domestic competition - including a professional league of 12 teams - and also a Sevens set-up, although player numbers remains a key target area.

"In terms of player resource, we don't have the luxury yet of saying 'player A is a Sevens player and Player B is a 15s player', our players are having to adapt and so far they are doing that successfully," added Thomas.

"But I do expect that we will have more specialisms by the time of 2013 (Rugby World Cup Sevens), where we want to be competitive, and 2016, where we really have to be competitive!"

Artemyev: Out to prove a point

One of the players making the shift over to the Sevens game this weekend is wing Vasily Artemyev, who learned his rugby in Ireland's capital Dublin and has already impressed twice this year on the World Series in Dubai and George.

"I've never been to Hong Kong myself but I've heard so many good things about the competition, the crowd and the atmosphere so I'm really looking forward to it," said Artemyev.

"I had my first experience of the World Series over in Dubai with the huge crowd there and it was so uplifting.

"I don't think that we should be coming here with any huge weight of expectation on our shoulders, we're still underdogs as far as I can see it and we just want to prove to the other teams that we can really play rugby on the same level and can beat good teams out here.

"We'll put up a good fight and hopefully the crowd with enjoy watching us and we'll help to make rugby more popular in Russia by performing well."

Russia line up in Hong Kong pool play against Adelaide champions Samoa, Argentina and fellow Europeans Italy.