Editing Openai/69692e77-1740-8006-8e16-055fc2ba066e (section)

=== Assistant: Yes — the quote you’re referring to comes from a specific statement by Sergei Kirienko in August 2017 about Russia’s in… ===
Yes — the quote you’re referring to comes from a specific statement by Sergei Kirienko in August 2017 about Russia’s internal constitutional order, not about foreign treaties in general.

===== 📌 What Kirienko Actually Said =====

In August 2017, Sergei Kirienko — then First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration — commented on the legal basis of the Russian state while addressing issues related to an expiring agreement between the federal government and Tatarstan (a republic within the Russian Federation). Kirienko said that “the Russian state is not built on the basis of treaties.” His point was that the Russian Federation’s statehood and constitutional order are not founded on separate contractual arrangements between the center and its regions, unlike the situation in the 1990s, when bilateral treaties were concluded with Tatarstan and some other republics to define powers and relations. Interfax.ru<ref>{{cite web|title=Interfax.ru|url=https://www.interfax.ru/russia/575603|publisher=interfax.ru|access-date=2026-01-16}}</ref>

===== 📌 The Context: Russia–Tatarstan Power-Sharing Agreements =====

In the early post-Soviet period, Moscow negotiated treaties with republics like Tatarstan and others to distribute powers within the newly formed federation. These treaties had political and legal significance in the 1990s, when Russia’s federal structure was still being defined. Interfax.ru<ref>{{cite web|title=Interfax.ru|url=https://www.interfax.ru/russia/575603|publisher=interfax.ru|access-date=2026-01-16}}</ref>

By 2017, the treaty with Tatarstan was expiring. Kirienko was explaining — to local politicians and officials in Kazan — that the modern Russian state does not rely on treaties between the federal center and subjects as the basis of its legal or constitutional status. Instead, he emphasized, state authority derives from the Constitution and federal law, not from a patchwork of bilateral power-sharing agreements. Interfax.ru<ref>{{cite web|title=Interfax.ru|url=https://www.interfax.ru/russia/575603|publisher=interfax.ru|access-date=2026-01-16}}</ref>

===== 📌 Why This Matters =====

His remark was widely reported because it seemed to dismiss the legal relevance of those old treaties that once helped ease the federal centre’s relations with republics like Tatarstan. But the quote was specific to internal constitutional arrangements, not an outright denial of the importance of international treaties or Russia’s participation in them.

If you’d like, I can also explain how that statement fits into broader debates about federalism and constitutional authority in Russia today.