Vladimir Putin’s constitution

The Kremlin has no doubt that Ukraine will collapse. “It is only a matter of time,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, exuding great confidence, whilst answering questions from Russian journalists attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, held in Bishkek from 31 August to 1 September.

In the Kremlin’s narrative, the ‘special military operation’ is merely a parenthesis between the death of the old world order and the birth of the new one that Russia, together with its allies, is labouring to build. The country’s external image is nothing more than a reflection of the evolution of its internal situation, as Andrei Kolesnikov, a former researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, explained in these columns last January. The Russian form of government has, in fact, undergone a gradual shift towards authoritarianism over time, a trend that has become even more pronounced since 24 February 2022. A partial litmus test of this adjustment to the form of government – which had been latent since the late 1990s – was the 2020 constitutional amendment, which modified the second part of the 1993 Constitution. On that occasion, not only were the primacy of national law over international law, the abolition of term limits for the presidency and a strengthening of the state’s centralised structure – effectively establishing a presidential personal regime – introduced, but provisions of a symbolic and identity-defining nature were also added, such as the reference to ‘spiritual and moral values’ and ‘historical memory’ as the foundations of the state’s political direction. The first two chapters – those devoted to fundamental rights and freedoms, modelled on liberal constitutionalism – have, however, remained formally intact, as they cannot be subject to a simple constitutional amendment (Article 135 of the Constitution). The result is that the Russian Constitution today is a peculiar ‘two-faced Janus’, in which the face of the original framework – itself influenced by American and French models – is juxtaposed with the illiberal face of Putin’s ‘vertical of power’.

From the perspective of building a new world order, this internal inconsistency within the constitutional text raises issues not only of image but also of legitimacy, to the extent that it has caused several members of the establishment to turn up their noses. For some time now, some of its most influential members have been proposing the convening of a Constituent Assembly to completely remove the vestiges of an uncomfortable past, regarded as not genuinely Russian but rather dominated by foreign interference. What is most troubling is Article 13, which, following the catalogue of rights, recognises ideological pluralism (paragraph 1) and, consequently, prohibits the imposition of a state ideology (paragraph 2).

As early as the 2023 St Petersburg Legal Forum, the head of the Federal Investigative Committee, General Alexander Bastrykin, had called on the institutions to develop a ‘new official ideology’ to be enshrined in the constitution. In 2025, the current Minister of Justice, Konstantin Chuychenko, made it clear that his ministry could no longer have as its sole objective the protection of citizens’ fundamental rights or the guarantee of the rule of law, but must instead place at the centre of its work the “strengthening of statehood” against foreign interference, the true key to understanding the whole of Russian history. At the St Petersburg Legal Forum last June, Chuychenko went even further: “When our Constitution was drafted, it was said that citizens’ rights and freedoms should be a priority. But it seems to me that this approach is not entirely correct, because it is impossible to guarantee rights without strengthening the state’. This Hobbesian approach is, in fact, shared well beyond Russia’s borders by all those who, whilst expressing confidence in constitutionalism, believe that the state is the sole—and indeed the highest—form of social consciousness within which citizens’ rights can be fully realised. Although he does not spell it out, Chuychenko seems, however, to go even further and put forward the thesis of a hierarchy of values, in which the state and its interests always take precedence over rights. Indeed, rights would no longer be barriers or constraints on the state’s choices but, according to a Schmittian approach, should be guaranteed only insofar as they are functionally geared towards supporting the state’s tasks, which are to be considered a priority over individual choices. The Ministry of Justice, moreover, is the department that, more than any other, has embodied at the domestic level this constitutional necessity to protect the state from the liberal ideology of the ‘enemies of the people’, who are accused of being funded from abroad: the register of foreign agents, as well as that of terrorist and extremist organisations or undesirable organisations, which is updated periodically, is an emblematic example of this.

The statements made by ultra-nationalist and religious circles – who are at the forefront of insistently calling for a constitutional revision – serve to clarify the crux of the Ministry of Justice’s argument. The influential ultra-Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malafeev, also speaking at this year’s St Petersburg Legal Forum, pointed out with some irritation that, although the current Constitution professes ideological agnosticism, in reality it still promotes the liberal ideology of rights above all other provisions and chapters of the Constitution. “And where are the duties? Two articles on taxes and the army,” he blurted out in disappointment.

Most recently, Alexander Dugin, the nationalist philosopher and one of Russia’s leading theorists of Eurasianism, has joined the debate. On 28 August, speaking at a forum with the unambiguous title ‘Together We Will Win’, Dugin responded to a question from a veteran of the special military operation regarding the relevance of the 1993 Constitution, ‘drafted under the careful guidance of people who are now our adversaries, even enemies’.

According to Dugin, in fact, “many provisions of our Constitution date back to the 1990s and are bound to disappear sooner or later. It is no coincidence,” the philosopher noted, “that references to God and the Russian people appeared during the pandemic”, when the second part of the Constitution underwent a thorough revision. “I believe that the work to improve our Constitution and bring it into line with the historical norms that permeate our society must continue. Indeed, I think that the Constitution will have to be revised at some point, and this will happen after victory. We will have a Constitution of Victory’, Dugin concluded emphatically. It seems that all provisions in the first and second titles of the old text that refer to Western liberal constitutionalism are to be removed. In their place, the institutionalisation of a clear hierarchy of values is envisaged, with national sovereignty, spiritual orthodoxy (understood as the defence of the Christian Orthodox tradition) and the citizen’s duty of service to the state-community at the summit. From this perspective, the Constitution should, once and for all, cease to be a check on power and instead essentially become an instrument for the active legitimisation and consolidation of the state, embodying that Schmittian vision in which fundamental rights constitute a homogeneous system of positivised values. In this regard, even the death penalty – which is currently effectively banned – could once again be up for debate.

At present, however, the Kremlin appears to continue favouring a gradual strategy, which leaves the first part of the Constitution formally intact but progressively strips it of meaning. The President’s plenipotentiary representative to the State Duma, Garry Minkh, also stated in August that he saw no objective reasons for amending the Constitution. Moreover, most constitutional experts – particularly those who have since joined the ranks of United Russia in the State Duma, such as Andrei Klishas – have always maintained that the 1993 Constitution was sufficiently flexible to allow for extensive adaptation of the form of state and government, if necessary even in continuity with the previous Soviet regime. Among them was also Boris Ebzeyev, who died on 26 August following a long career, first as a member of the Constituent Assembly and a constitutional judge, then as governor of the Karachay-Circassia region and, finally, as a member of the Central Electoral Commission. That said, however, whilst it is true that he described the 1993 Constitution as being ‘wiser than those who wrote it and those who comment on it’ – precisely because of its dynamic capacity to adapt to the most varied requirements for safeguarding state integrity – it was Ebzeyev himself who did not hesitate for a moment to advocate the need for its revision in 2020, emphasising, amongst other things, the merits of an explicit reference to traditional values. And it is no coincidence that it is precisely on these values that Bastrykin and nationalist and religious circles intend to base the new first part of what will one day be the Constitution of Victory.

What, then, remains of constitutionalism in Russia? This was a question also posed a few years ago by William Partlett, author of "Why the Russian Constitution Matters" (2024). In the conclusions of his book, the Australian constitutional lawyer explained quite clearly why studying the decline of constitutionalism in Russia is, and remains, important. This is not a matter of purely ethnographic or academic interest, but – as is always the case with comparative studies – it is essential for explaining certain seismic shifts which, to put it simply, we have chosen to label as populist or illiberal, but which have now also taken root in liberal democracies.