Yes, I've also seen lately that quite a number of (older) posts got deleted. And all were in Ratimov's self moderated topics. Then I've seen that it's not only my posts that are removed, the whole topics got emptied.
While it's far from nice behavior on the forum, I knew the risk for this when I've posted in self-moderated topics.
It's a bit shame, since although he made a lot of good and informative topics, he acts highly questionable now and then.
But from there to questionable actions of mods... it still one more step, and a pretty big one.
I don't know to what extent the moderators of the local Russian board may be in cahoots with him
He is not a new member and it's normal that he has friends on the forum. If some of the mods are indeed "covering" him it's not a great thing to hear. It can be also normal mod tasks, as LoyceV said.
Can it be checked only from history (loyce.club, ninjastic.space), logs, bpip... if somebody has the time and willingness? While it can happen for mods to act incorrectly, even willingly, I am also not convinced that theymos should go into PMs (but I am not worried, I am 99% sure he will not), especially as this kind of things can be discussed easily outside of the forum.