MOSCOW, April 16. /TASS/. Irina Podnosova, nominated as new president of the Russian Supreme Court, has no plans to introduce any radical changes to the country’s judicial system or halt progress toward more humane criminal penalties.

Taking questions at a meeting of the Federation Council on constitutional legislation, Podnosova said she has no complaints about her predecessor in the position, Vyacheslav Lebedev, or how the judicial system has been functioning. "All I can say now is that I will do my best to improve the existing judicial system," she added.

The official also pledged continued efforts to make criminal penalties more humane. "Of course, the Supreme Court will continue to work toward that goal on a systemic basis," Podnosova said as she recounted that over the past two decades the number of imprisoned convicts in the country had more than halved from 1 million to 400,000.

Commenting on proposals put forward by Russian lawmakers to revive capital punishment in Russia, Podnosova said that she would rather not express her opinion on that matter but that she agreed with Lebedev who considered the abolition of death penalty as a resolved issue. In 2015, he rejected discussions of plans to reintroduce death penalty after a while as irrelevant.