How changes to the Constitution can affect rallies and complaints to the ECHR: the opinion of lawyers

What Vladimir Putin said:

“Indeed, I believe that the time has come to make some changes to the Basic Law of the country that directly guarantee the priority of the Russian Constitution in our legal space.

What does this mean? This literally means the following: the requirements of international legislation and treaties, as well as decisions of international bodies, can apply on the territory of Russia only to the extent that they do not entail restrictions on the rights and freedoms of man and citizen, and do not contradict our Constitution.”

Alexandra Chilikova, coordinator of the ECHR program OVD-Info :

To be honest, it's not clear what this means. Because you don’t really need to change anything for this. In paragraph 4 of Article 15 of the Constitution, which proclaims the priority of international law, everything is extremely unclear. This article is interpreted differently by lawyers .

One group of lawyers believes that Part 4 directly establishes the priority of international treaties over Russian legislation, which includes the Constitution. Another says that this part states that international treaties have priority only over Russian laws and regulations, but not the Constitution - the latter stands “apart” and has supremacy, due to the principle of sovereignty

Therefore, it is not clear why the president spoke specifically about the Constitution. Not to mention the fact that Article 15 cannot be changed; only the entire Constitution can be changed. It is included in the first chapter, “Fundamentals of the Constitutional System”; Article 135 of the Constitution prohibits making changes to this chapter.