How a Byzantine proxy war backfired and accidentally birthed a new Balkan power
Seeking to avoid a direct conflict with Bulgaria, Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas hired the Kievan Rus' to invade his neighbor. The plan worked too well. Instead of a weakened rival, Byzantium found itself facing a powerful, expansionist state on its northern border, triggering a brutal multi-year struggle for control.
In 967, Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas, preoccupied with campaigns against the Abbasid Caliphate, sought to neutralize Bulgaria through proxy warfare. He paid Sviatoslav, ruler of the Kievan Rus', 1,500 pounds of gold to attack from the north. Sviatoslav’s campaign far exceeded expectations; he seized the Bulgarian capital and captured Tsar Boris II, effectively turning the country into a vassal state. By 969, Sviatoslav had developed ambitions to move his own power base to the Danube, threatening the Byzantine Empire itself.
The situation escalated when John I Tzimiskes succeeded the murdered Nikephoros in 969. After a Rus' advance was halted at the Battle of Arcadiopolis in 970, Tzimiskes launched a full-scale invasion of Bulgaria in 971. The Byzantine army, numbering up to 40,000, stormed the capital of Preslav and besieged the fortress of Dorostolon for three months. Following a final, savage battle in late July 971, Sviatoslav capitulated, agreeing to withdraw his forces in exchange for safe passage home.
Tzimiskes formally annexed eastern Bulgaria, stripping Boris II of his imperial regalia in a triumphal procession in Constantinople. However, this victory was incomplete. Byzantine control was largely confined to urban centers in the east, leaving the central and western Balkans effectively independent. This power vacuum allowed the Cometopuli dynasty to emerge, eventually leading to a Bulgarian revival under Tsar Samuel. While the Byzantines viewed Samuel as a mere rebel, his resistance forced the Empire into decades of further conflict, culminating in the final conquest of the Bulgarian state in 1018.
