They will now face a third-placed team from Group A, C or D in Paris on Saturday and will go into the last 16 tie with real confidence.
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Police in Toulouse are hoping to avoid a repeat of the violent clashes that marred the build-up to England’s opening Group B fixture with Russian Federation in Marseille.
Their first goal was scored by Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsey and the second by Swansea City’s Neil Taylor.
“It’s probably the best performance I’ve been involved in with Wales”, said Gareth Bale.
Ramsey opened the scoring in the 11th minute after a quick counterattack, chipping the ball over the advancing goalkeeper.
With Russia needing to win and playing a very high line, their keeper was kept busy until the whistle, first stopping Ramsey’s hard shot from distance, and later another from Bale. Leonid Slutski’s side somehow sunk to new depths from those which saw them torn apart by England and then humiliated by Marek Hamsik’s one-man assault for Slovakia.
Showing no signs of a hangover from their last-gasp 2-1 defeat to England in Lens on Thursday, Chris Coleman’s side controlled the game from start to finish and took the lead through a neat Aaron Ramsey finish.
But Bale was a constant threat all night and grabbed his third goal of the tournament when he cleverly dinked the ball past Igor Akinfeev with the outside of his right boot midway through the second half as Russian Federation were eliminated.
Ledley’s raking diagonal pass picked out Gunter in space on the right and the ball was moved onto Ramsey, who glided across the edge of the area before finding Bale. Tonight that was what we wanted to work on the most and we passed it tremendously well.
There was more to come just nine minutes later as Bale again made a nuisance of himself and Roman Shirakov poked the ball into Taylor’s path.
The result meant England was leapfrogged by Wales at the top of the Group B.
However, Bale scored seven goals in the qualifying rounds of Euro 2016, dragging Wales into a major tournament after a 58-year wait.
“As a player, I was a part of a few good teams”, Coleman added, “but we missed out, so now I’m lucky to be able to experience what I never did as a player”. We had these three games and we wanted to make sure we got ourselves through to the knockout rounds.
The ease with which Wales cut their opposition to shreds said at least as much about Russia’s atrocious defending as it did about the Welsh themselves.
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The Russian Interior Ministry announced late last month that it dispatched a total of six specially trained Russian policemen to France.
