I bought Avast last month and when I tried to connect the Russian server there wasn't any so I contact the support team but didn't receive any reply from them.
The news itself is not very transparent for me. Earlier Avast SecureLine mostly to connect through Russian servers and since a lot of VPN stop their server in Russia mean's you can't play the game anymore?
Thereafter I recently found this guide
https://techloris.com/best-vpn/ which explains the ExpressVPN still works to the Russian server including some other countries.
Without a reliable VPN service, too many sites are unavailable to the user of Russian sites.