Russia`s horizontal red, white and blue tricolor flag was flapping alongside France`s vertical one on the Promenade des Anglais as the Riviera resort of Nice welcomed President Dimitry Medvedev.

The image was one of partnership but, while the Cote d`Azur has a long history as a destination beloved by Russians, the 10,000 or so who have made the Riviera their home don`t always feel as welcome as they should.

Russian aristocrats chose the region as a playground in the nineteenth century, after Tsar Nicolas I`s widow Empress Alexandra Feodorovna started a trend, but today they have been replaced by the oligarchs of New Russia.

The flash tastes and dubious money of these post-Soviet businessmen make some French, not to mention some of the longer-standing Russian residents, uncomfortable, a view which many Russians find unfair.

`In our country everyone loves the French, and Russians do everything they can to help and to protect French tourists,` boasted Helena, a psychology teacher out browsing in Nice`s popular Russian language bookstore.

`Here, you don`t have the same caring attitude towards us,` she complained, standing under a portrait of the first Russian Orthodox leader to head his community in Nice after the French Revolution, Metropolitan Vladimir.

Further north, away from the seafront hotels and casinos, Nice`s Tsarevitch district is dominated by the Russian Cathedral, topped by its distinctive blue and green onion domes.

Church warden Alexis Obolensky has heard complaints like Helena`s before, but feels that Russians often have themselves to blame if their welcome on the Cote d`Azur is not as warm as autumn`s Mediterranean sunshine.

`If your behaviour is marked by arrogance, if you spend without limit and if you cut yourself off from the local population, well then, people are going to look at you askance,` he explained.

For Obolensky, the problem isn`t with all Russians, but just with those known as the `New Russians`, the young capitalist class that got rich in post-Soviet privatisations and the recent energy boom.

-- `Because they push up prices, they are resented` --

The ultra-rich oligarchs and their hangers-on are hard to spot in their secluded estates and behind the tinted windscreens of their Mercedes, but they have had an unmistakable effect on the local economy and gossip pages.

`We hear a lot of talk about them, but we never see them. I think the oligarchs are a kind of myth,` said Joelle Obolensky, Alexis` wife.

One oligarch who certainly is nearby is Roman Abramovitch, the world`s 15th richest man and owner of English Premier league outfit Chelsea, who bought the Chateau de la Croe near the tip of Cap d`Antibes.

Another who may perhaps join him is Mikhail Prokhorov, a nickel mining baron, who was widely reported to have spent 500 million euros on `the most expensive villa in the world`, the Villa Leopolda at Villefranche-sur-Mer.

He denies this, but it is said that negotiations are continuing.

Some oligarchs end up in the limelight for more troubling reasons, such as Suleiman Kerimov, the world`s 35th richest man, who was killed in 2006 when his Ferrari crashed on the Promenade des Anglais.

But the resorts of the Cote d`Azur have always attracted wealthy European holidaymakers, so why does such a cloud hang over the Russians? In part because of persistent rumours that they owe their sudden wealth to gangster tactics.

Are the huge sums lavished by Russian residents and visitors on their villas, yachts and casino visits the proceeds of crime? Is the Riviera leisure industry a huge machine to launder dirty money?

`It`s unprovable,` sighed a French police investigator.

`In order to find out where all the money comes from, you`d have to go back to its origins, in Russia. We don`t get any information from there, and so, it`s true, there`s a universal suspicion hanging over Russian money.`

Whatever spring the cash wells up from, it eventually trickles down into Russia`s small but growing middle class, which has begun to follow the lead of the mega-rich in taking its holidays in France.

But even the smaller-fry have managed to annoy some French locals.

`Because they push prices up, they are resented as if they were invaders,` said property agent Matthieu Tichadou, who has just sold a small, one-bedroomed holiday flat overlooking the Mediterranean for 600,000 euros (750,000 dollars).

France will not allow these concerns to overshadow Friday`s European Union-Russia Summit, at which Medvedev was to meet his counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss reforming the entire world financial system.

But Russia certainly won`t feel like the poor neighbour at Europe`s table.