Played a game as rampaging Russia, going well after VP victory just to continue conquest. Already had a nearly-complete Poland (had every component other than Danzig), and a continuous swath of territory from the Crimea to Picardy (see attached map). This includes every single territory (minors and provinces!) in the CoTR courtesy of much sadistic beating on the AIs (2 unconditionals ea. PR/AU/TU, 1 ea. FR/GB, and targeting of the controlled minors during wars to get as many as possible before their owners sued for peace). There was no previous instantiation of the CoTR in this particular game.
The manual does claim that Russia
is eligible -- which is a deviation from the AH version of the original EiA rules, which only permit Austria, Prussia and France to do it. The only error message is 'Cannot create kingdom', which raises the question of whether it's an error in the manual and Russia simply isn't permitted (my suspicion), or whether there's an additional limit (like number of kingdoms or so forth).
/Zapped the files by mistake, but got a screenshot.
