Does Russia consider it unconstitutional to extradite its citizens? U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton said this to ABC regarding why President Trump is not going to demand that Putin extradite the 25 Russians indicted by Special Counsel Mueller: > It’s pretty silly for the president to demand something that he can’t get legally. And this is a very serious matter. **The Russians take the position, you can like it or not like it, that their constitution forbids them to extradite Russian citizens.** They have an agreement with the Europeans that looks a lot like an extradition treaty. Europeans, frequently, tried to use that to get the Russians to extradite their nationals and they flat out refused to do it. I’m interested in the part in bold. My question is, is Bolton right that the Russian government takes the position that under the Russian constitution it cannot extradite its citizens for trial in other countries?

Yes, the Russian constitution prevents deportation and extradition of Russian citizens from Russia.

This protection can be found in Chapter 2, Article 61 of the Russian constitution:

> Article 61
>
> 1. A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported from Russia or extradited to another State.
>
> 2. The Russian Federation shall guarantee its citizens protection and patronage abroad.
>
>


Several other sources(1, 2, 3) give the same translation for that article, so the translations is probably accurate.

That article, plus the fact that the US and Russia have no extradition treaties, means it's pretty definite that Russian citizens are entirely protected from being extradited from Russia.