I can't speak for my cycle-mate, but I have reported BADecker's posts with all sorts of violations, including plagiarism. The only thing that is handled properly is multiposting, everything else is ignored.
That means that the staff are checking the reports, they just don't agree with your point of view. They only agree when you report posts to be merged, but not not the off-topic cases. I didn't pay too much attention to what he wrote about Russia's occupation of Ukraine because I couldn't care less what he thinks about it. But it seems the staff don't mind it, for whatever reason. But that plagiarism that o_e_l_e_o found definitely needs to be addressed.
This has been going on for years. BADecker would always take the most absurd position on almost every topic (except he was not a flat earther, go figure), which is not a bad thing in itself. However it doesn't mean he should have free reign derailing every thread. He also tends to create needless new threads when similar topics already exist; it's low level copypasa-but-with-links-so-technically-not-plagiarism garbage and he's basically doing this to bypass the multipost rule.
I think mods' indifference is caused by their lack of engagement, lack of feeling for the flow of discussion and disruptions thereof. That's why I think that a person from outside who is not actually invested in keeping P&S clean and usable (not just for copypasta trolls) would not do well as a moderator there, and that's basically what we're seeing now. That's why FH was a good choice for a moderator regardless of his political views.
I had talks with HF about this very topic and I believe he truly tried to remain impartial as possible.
He did and P&S was a much more adequate board under his supervision. I've had some discussions with him on the subject of moderation as well, and I liked his reasoning even if I disagreed with him.