Nine Warriors are in Townsend's starting XV for the Pool A match at the Shizuoka Stadium Ecopa this Wednesday.
Fraser Brown, Scott Cummings, Zander Fagerson, Adam Hastings, George Horne and Ryan Wilson were all on the bench for the win against Samoa and have been promoted to the starting team for Scotland's penultimate pool match in Japan.
Peter Horne and George Turner get their first chance to make a mark on this year's tournament, while Tommy Seymour comes in from outside the match-day 23 that faced the Pacific Islanders last week.
Scotland need a bonus-point win over Russia to go into the final group match four points behind the host nation.
"First and foremost we've picked a team we believe is capable of defeating an increasingly impressive and combative Russia side, who are looking to finish their Pool campaign on a high," said Townsend.
"Any successful World Cup campaign is built on a squad effort and those players who didn't get the opportunity to start against Samoa really helped provide that team with a quality week of preparation.
"Now it's their chance to get stuck into our next important game."
Russia, ranked 20th in the world, are without a point in Japan following three defeats.
Scotland
15 Blair Kinghorn (Edinburgh)
14 Tommy Seymour (Glasgow Warriors)
13 Duncan Taylor (Saracens)
12 Peter Horne VICE CAPTAIN (Glasgow Warriors)
11 Darcy Graham (Edinburgh)
10 Adam Hastings (Glasgow Warriors)
9 George Horne (Glasgow Warriors)
1 Gordon Reid (Ayrshire Bulls)
2 George Turner (Glasgow Warriors)
3 Zander Fagerson (Glasgow Warriors)
4 Scott Cummings (Glasgow Warriors)
5 Ben Toolis (Edinburgh)
6 John Barclay CAPTAIN (Edinburgh)
7 Fraser Brown (Glasgow Warriors)
8 Ryan Wilson VICE CAPTAIN (Glasgow Warriors)
Substitutes
16 Stuart McInally (Edinburgh)
17 Simon Berghan (Edinburgh)
18 Willem Nel (Edinburgh)
19 Grant Gilchrist (Edinburgh)
20 Magnus Bradbury (Edinburgh)
21 Jamie Ritchie (Edinburgh)
22 Henry Pyrgos (Edinburgh)
23 Chris Harris (Gloucester)