The article considers the legal structure of vindication of real estate developed in Russian science and practice. Protection of the rights of the owner of real estate who has lost possession and is not registered in the Unified State Register of Real Estate (EGRN) is carried out by filing two lawsuits in court: for recognition of the right of ownership and vindication. Due to the peculiarities of the statute of limitations, in Russian practice, the priority of actual ownership of real estate over the records of ownership in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities is established. The need to combine the two claims is caused by their possible competition in connection with the application to each claim of its own rules on the validity of the statute of limitations. The refusal to extend the limitation period to the vindication claim for the return of ownership should lead to the establishment of only one claim within the framework of the method of protecting the violated rights of the owner to real estate – vindication. An independent claim for recognition of the right in this situation seems redundant. Its necessity is caused by an attempt to apply the German model of protection of the violated rights of the owner of real estate, where the impossibility of vindication is due to the high level of public reliability of entries in the register. In modern Russia, the position of complete denial of vindication of real estate is not supported by the consistent implementation of the principle of irrevocability of rights registered in state registers. At the same time, the construction of a claim for the protection of the rights of the owner of real estate allows us to take the first step towards the development of a vindication model for the protection of any absolute right, the elements of which are the requirement to recognize the right and the requirement to restore the legitimation of the right holder.