Putin expelled Kalyapin and Svanidze from the Human Rights Council, and Kots, an employee of Komsomolskaya Pravda, joined the council instead.

President Vladimir Putin updated the composition of the HRC, expelling from it human rights activists Igor Kalyapin and Alexander Verkhovsky, as well as journalists Nikolai Svanidze and Ekaterina Vinokurova, and instead the council included POC member Alexei Melnikov and Komsomolskaya Pravda employee Alexander Kots. The decree was published on the legal information portal.

, was also expelled from the Human Rights Council Andrei Babushkin, who died in May of this year . He called for an investigation into torture and talked about violations by security forces.

In response to Putin’s decision, Svanidze said : “In fact, there is nothing to comment on. The President has the right to rotate the HRC. I expected this because I did not hide my anti-war position, and I thought that this would happen earlier. This, of course, cuts off opportunities, but again, this is to be expected.”

Earlier it became known that Kalyapin, who founded the “Committee against Torture,” was not included in the new composition of the PMC. He, like Svanidze, asked Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov to explain on what basis prisoners recruited to participate in the war in Ukraine are being released from colonies.

The military correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Kots, who joined the new composition of the HRC. He claimed that "Ukrainian Nazis" were responsible for the massacres in Bucha, who "carried out a massacre" when Russian troops withdrew from the city.