Gnome provides services (such as Gnome keyring, GConf, PolicyKit integration, etc.) that some programs use as well as additional features like theme application and application autostarting. If you use programs that make use of those services and you don't have Gnome, you may miss out on some functionality. Depending on what you use, it might be critical, or you might never miss it.
Your keyboard bindings are not working because your keyboard no longer has those keysyms.
If you want to have, for example, Alt+F do something, then you need "F" in some key.
But if you load "ru" alone, then there is no "F" at all (nor any latin letter).
I think, specially when you need to handle multiple layouts, that it is much better to let X11 (through setxkbmap) do the job for you; the way the window managers do it is much more limited as you have discovered.
You may also try, as the awfull widget seems to call setxkbmap, to change "ru" with "ru,us", eg:
kbdcfg.layout = { { "us", "" }, { "ru,us", "phonetic" } }
that way, the "us" layout will be stacked on top of the "ru" one when loaded, and the keysysms of the "us" layout, while still not directly typeable, will be seen by the X11 layer that handles the key bindings.
Best Answer
Xwritsworks with Awesome. It's a simple command line program. Here's an example for a five-minute break with screen lock every 55 minutes: