The 2020 amendments to the Russian Constitution and the labyrinths of constitutional jurisprudence

This article examines the 2020 amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation (1993), the process of their adoption, and their impact on the development of constitutionalism in Russia. The constitutional amendments in question were initiated by the President of Russia at the beginning of 2020, were adopted with urgency by the Russian Parliament, were subsequently approved by the “all-Russian vote”, and finally entered into force on 4 July 2020. They not only changed the content of the Russian Constitution, but also altered constitutional values, and have led to a crisis in the identity of the Russian Constitution. These constitutional amendments serve the interests of the authoritarian state and demonstrate the fate of the constitution, where the role of supreme law has been lost. While considering the erroneous path of adopting the 2020 constitutional amendments, this article is devoted to an analysis of the opinion set out in the respective conclusion of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, which assessed the process under discussion and the content of the proposed constitutional amendments by interpreting the provisions of the Russian Constitution. This opinion created preconditions for the entry into force of the amendments to the Constitution. Thus, the main attention in the article is focused, in particular, on the assessment given by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation rather than the content of the constitutional amendments