Overview
- Alexey Meshkov laid flowers at the Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron cemetery in a visit lasting about ten minutes and gave brief remarks in Russian before leaving.
- No state officials received the delegation, and only the prefect’s chief of staff attended to verify the security arrangements.
- A security cordon was set from 6 a.m., and a prefectural order issued around late morning cleared protesters from the cemetery to adjacent streets.
- Ukrainian-refugee groups staged a small, authorized protest nearby, criticizing the visit as political use of wartime memory.
- Russia funded the restoration of the two steles, while local voices stress the graves include a Belarusian and a Ukrainian rather than exclusively Russians.