Analysts at the presidential state law department said...

Analysts at the presidential state law department said that The Russian president has no power to lift the moratorium from the death penalty. They recalled that the freeze on the capital punishment was introduced by the Constitutional Court.
Vladimir Kartashkin, the head of the Kremlin human rights commission said that Russia's Constitutional Court would "for some reason" consider lifting the current moratorium on the death penalty and that "There exist legal mechanisms for this". However, Kartashkin said he hoped that the Constitutional Court would not revise the ban.
"Everyone, including the president, must abide by this decision. The Constitution is the Supreme Law, and Constitutional Court judges are the only interpreters of this law," he said.
He also expressed support for the opinion of Kremlin experts that the president is not authorized to lift the moratorium. "I hope that the appeal of the State Duma [to President Vladimir Putin to lift the moratorium] will have ho effect on the president's decision to abolish the death penalty," Kartashkin said.
He said he was against the death penalty. First of all, "Russia must meet its international commitments," he said. Secondly, "throughout its history, Russia has more than once tightened its forms of punishment and put its criminals to death, but this has had no good results."