Freedom of assembly in Russia is granted by Article 31 of the Constitution adopted in 1993, where it states that citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets.
[2] According to a Russian law introduced in 2014, a fine or detention of up to 15 days may be given for holding a demonstration without the permission of authorities and prison sentences of up to five years may be given for three breaches.
[6] If the assembly in public is expected to involve more than one participant, its organisers are obliged to notify executive or local self-government authorities of the upcoming event few days in advance in writing.
[citation needed] The regional and local authorities can issue secondary regulations, but limitations and prohibitions on public events can only be introduced by Federal Laws.
[9] Since 2014, holding a demonstration without the permission of authorities, even a peaceful single-person picket, is punishable by a fine or detention of up to 15 days, or up to five years in prison if it is the third breach.
A Moscow district court ruled in November 2005, that local authorities had violated the legal procedure for regulating public events in its handling of the Church's repeated demonstrations.
After organizing a picket in Moscow on 3 September 2006, in commemoration of the victims of Beslan school hostage crisis, human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov was arrested and detained for three days, arbitrary and illegally, according to human rights organizations, as he had submitted the required notification prior to the event, but chosen not to observe the subsequent recommendation that it take place elsewhere or on a different date.
On 17 December 2006, Moscow city authorities prohibited approximately 300 members of the political party Yabloko and their supporters from marching in memory of killed journalists.
Several leading political activists were named as witnesses in the case and had their homes searched in operations that were widely broadcast by state-controlled television channels.
[13] "The release of businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Pussy Riot singers Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and a handful of Bolotnaya case detainees (three) should not been seen as a benign act of clemency, but a politically expedient move in the run up to the Sochi Olympics," said John Dalhuisen, Director at Amnesty International.
This concept, called Strategy-31, has been proposed by Eduard Limonov and supported by various opposition movements and human-rights organisations, including the Moscow Helsinki Group headed by Lyudmila Alexeyeva.
[15] In June 2015, a court in Murmansk fined a woman 20,000 roubles for holding an unsanctioned demonstration on 1 March – a silent one-person rotating commemoration of Boris Nemtsov.
[4] Amnesty International stated, "The shocking sentencing of Ildar Dadin shows that the Russian authorities are using the law on public assemblies to fast-track peaceful protesters to prison".