PARIS, January 16. /TASS/. The Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois commune’s committee responsible for taking care of Russian graves is concerned about the future of 23 Russian graves after the mayor’s office’s refusal to cooperate with Russia, the committee’s secretary, Michel Manago, told TASS on Monday.

"For more than 15 years, the Russian government has been paying for the concessions, which relatives are unable to renew," he noted. "But this year, the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois mayor’s office decided to reject Russia’s funds in protest against the special military operation in Ukraine."

"French laws give relatives four years to pay to extend concessions. Otherwise, the land plot goes over to the commune which is free to administer it at its discretion," he explained. "We are especially worried about the fate of 23 graves as the extension of their concessions is in question."

In all, "around 500 out of some 5,200 Russian graves are in unsatisfactory condition," he said, adding that the committee "continues to take care of the graves of prominent Russians, for instance, writer Ivan Bunin, film director Andrei Tarkovsky, ballet dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Serge Lifar."

The Russian embassy in France told TASS earlier on Monday that it has called on the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois authorities for cooperation in settling the Russian cemetery situation. According to the embassy, the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois municipal council decided in December to reject Russia’s payment for expired concessions for compatriots’ burials the Russian side has been regularly paying since 2005. The move "jeopardizes the maintenance of graves," the embassy stressed.

Neither the French ministry of culture nor the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois municipal authorities were available for comment.

Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois

The Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery is the largest Russian burial ground in France. The first Russian burials here date back to the 1920s.

Among those buried there are Russia’s first Nobel Prize winner in literature Ivan Bunin (1870-1953), painter Konstantin Korovin (1981-1939), French Foreign Legion veteran and French General Zinovy Peshkov (1884-1966), a stepson of writer Maxim Gorky.

The cemetery houses the cenotaph of Princess Vera Obolensky, a French Resistance member during World War II who was executed by the Nazis in August 1944.

During his first visit to France as Russia’s President in the autumn of 2000, Vladimir Putin laid flowers at Bunin's grave and Obolenky’s memorial. He also visited the graves of ballerina Olga Preobrajenska, poet and playwright Alexander Galich, writer Viktor Nekrasov, ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and the memorial for the Don Cossacks.