Russia’s ambassador to France, Alexei Meshkov, was met by pro-Ukraine protesters on the French island of Oleron on Monday. Meshkov had traveled there to lay flowers on the graves of four Soviet citizens who joined the French resistance to help liberate the island from the Nazis during World War II.
As per AFP, the Russian embassy helped restore the monument, claiming that it had previously been in a “state of neglect.” Russian embassies in Europe have a long track record of funding the restoration of Second World War monuments and graves in Europe – arguably as part of a long-term propaganda strategy to lionize the Red Army, glorify Russia’s Soviet past, and ultimately justify Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin and its mouthpieces have consistently likened Ukraine’s government to Germany’s Nazi regime.
However, just one of the four men buried in the cemetery was Russian, according to Olga Gaillard-Bazilesko, who has lived on the island off France’s western coast for three decades and is now the head of a volunteer association called Oleron for Ukraine. One of the fallen soldiers was Belarusian, and two others were Ukrainian.
Gaillard-Bazilesko, who was among the roughly 30 protesters waiting to greet Meshkov, said that he had “no business being here today.”
“Russia has no place in Europe. Their place is in the international court,” she added.
Michel Parent, one of the island’s mayors, said that he had no problem with the protesters but that he did have a problem with the ambassador’s visit. “I want to say no to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,” he told AFP. “Today it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it will be Europe.”
According to FranceInfo, local mayor Christophe Sueur said that he’d received an “unconventional and error-ridden” email inviting him to join the Russian ambassador on his visit but that he did not want to be associated with it. Sueur said that he had subsequently authorized the protest against Meshkov, though a police cordon was put in place to prevent any serious incidents.
The Russian ambassador brushed off the protests with a single sentence. “The memory of those who liberated this island must be sacred to the island’s inhabitants,” he said, as per AFP.
Also on Monday, the Kremlin said that a European counter-proposal to a US-drafted plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine drafted jointly by France, Britain, and Germany was “entirely unconstructive and unsuitable for us.”