A journalist leaves Russia's Presidential Human Rights Council, after it refuses to investigate Cossack vigilantes in Moscow

The journalist Maxim Shevchenko says he’s had enough of the Presidential Human Rights Council. He’s calling it quits, after the organization ignored his calls for an inquiry into the Cossack groups that attacked anti-Putin protesters on May 5. Shevchenko says the council’s “supervising bureaucracy” has lost interest in fulfilling its mission. “We tried to do a lot of important things, but in the end we accomplished almost nothing at all,” Shevchenko said on Ekho Moskvy on Thursday.

“I make no common cause with [Alexey] Navalny or his political views, but the beating of Muscovites by some bandits in downtown Moscow and [Kremlin spokesman Dmitry] Peskov saying that the Kremlin hasn’t received any complaints about this shows that we’re dealing with an open and deliberate sabotage [...]. I don’t want a part in this theater,” Shevchenko said.

Some of the men dressed as Cossacks who beat up protesters at a May 5 anti-Putin rally may be on Moscow City Hall’s payroll, according to the newsletter The Bell. For the past three years, their “army” has received 15.9 million rubles (more than $255,000) in public funds for services that include “ensuring public security during mass events.”