Abstract: The subject of this research is the problems of ensuring transportation safety at the initial stage of establishment of Ancient Rus’. The author explores the origins of formation of the national legal framework for ensuring transportation safety; as well as describes the transition from extralegal means of ensuring transportation safety (physical armed defense of the subjects of transport relations) towards legal regulation of this issue. The platform of transportation safety of that time was based on the variety of transportation services, first and foremost, international. Emphasis is made on the natural-climatic conditions, due to which the East Slavs put the problem of ensuring safety of water transportation to the forefront. Application of the narrative method of research allowed structuring a logically consistent image of the formation of legal framework for ensuring transportation safety in its historical development. The comparative legal method allowed analyzing the processes of formation of legal framework for ensuring transportation safety in the countries that dealt with Ancient Rus’ in this field. The author supports an opinion on infeasibility of juridification of relations in the area of transportation safety in the pre-state period; only with the emergence of state institutions in the territory of East Slavs, they take on the functions of legal protection of the subjects of transport relations. The first international agreements of the Kiev State and the Novgorod Feudal Republic confirm this conclusion.