Russia’s Constitution has long been overdue for “renovation” to make the country stronger, communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky said on Thursday.

“Russia is no more stable” than the USSR which collapsed under its own weight, Zyuganov said at a conference dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution.

“We need to think well, weigh things up and respond to the long overdue challenges,” he said.

Russia has yet to live up to the concept of a social state as declared in the Constitution, Zyuganov said.

“With this Constitution we have lost 15 million people, including 14.5 million ethnic Russians,” he said.

Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia, blamed the current Constitution for bringing about the collapse of the USSR and called for amendments to hold the country closer together.

The most “terrible” provision in the Constitution is Article 5 that applies the concept of state to the republics as part of Russia, he said.

“They have slightly modified the Soviet-era Constitution’s provision on the right of secession,” Zhirinovsky said, adding that it is a “time bomb.”

If the Constitution says that a republic is a state with its own emblem, flag, economy and language, then it is just a step away from independence, he warned.