Problem with VPN pupblic IP

Back in summer I needed access to a trusted VPN service. This was just at the time that the RiseuVPN snap package became available. I made a small donation and installed it. Unfortunately, every time I connected, it would give me a public IP address registered in Hong Kong and half the services I used would block my connection. So I gave up.

Then a month ago I again needed a VPN service so I tried again. It still insists on giving me a Hong Kong address and I still can't use it. So I decided to go back to the legacy openvpn service.

For the last three weeks that has worked perfectly. Every time I connected I got a different public IP in the 199.254.238.xxx range. I could connect to everything I needed and speed and stability were good. However, for the last few days, whenever I connect I get the same IP address 198, 252.153.226 and again, for some reason half the services I connect to are blocking me. No matter how many times I disconnect and reconnect I can not persuade it to give me a different public IP.

I have three questions.

1) please put my mind at rest. Are the 199.254.238.xxx IPs RseUP addressses ? I'm now worried that I may have had a misconfiguration and was picking up a non-riseup pubic ip.

2) if those are riseup addresses, is there anyway that the openvpn client can ask for a different IP to the one it was last given ?

3) is there any way to force the RiseupVPN snap package to pick a gateway other than hong kong ?

Thanks
Charles

p.s.
This is the second time I've raised this ticket in the past hour. I can't find the first ticket anywhere hence the re-raise. Apologies for the double post if the first ticket shows up.