It's true, Russia banned access to bitcointalk some time ago so every user coming from there has to use VPN in order to access it. That makes their numbers even more impressive and I wonder how many people from my country (Croatia) would bother going through hassle like that just to access the forum.
Of course it will affect some users who are not used to accessing forums using a VPN or TOR, but if they really like forums then they will definitely look for solutions so they can continue their activities as usual. But in my opinion, it's not only because of restriction or bans that the user base is down but I have seen quite a lot of decrease in active users during 2018 to 2020 due to thousands of failed altcoin projects.
I have too a bad feeling about italian board going trough a VPN!
How is it possible, is Italy doing the same with Russia? I'm not sure that's true, but last month there were only 60 active posters on Italian boards or about 55% of active posters on Indonesian local boards.