This work focuses on the legislative and human rights protection of the right to freedom of assembly in the Russian Federation. It analyses domestic normative acts and acts of law enforcement and compares them with the principles worked out by the European Court of Human Rights and the relative practice of some other jurisdictions. The main goal of the research was to identify the crucial problems in the Russian assembly legislation and to propose possible solutions in what way the Legislator and judges should move in order to establish the free exercising of the right to protest peacefully de facto.