SVYATOSLAV IGOREVICH.
Grand prince of Kiev from 945 and the greatest of the Varangian princes of early Russian history.
He was the son of Grand Prince Igor probably the grandson of Rurik prince of Novgorod and the last non-Christian ruler of the Kievan state.
After coming of age he began a series of bold military expeditions leaving his mother Olga to manage the internal affairs of the Kievan state until her death in 969.
Svyatoslav sent messengers to the other lands announcing his intention to attack them.
Between 963 and 965 he defeated the Khazars on the lower Don and the Ossetes and Circassians in the northern Caucasus.
He also attacked the Volga Bulgars.
In 967 he defeated the Balkan Bulgars at the behest of the Byzantines to whom he then refused to cede his conquest.
He declared his intention of establishing a Russo-Bulgarian empire with its capital at Pereyaslavets (now Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky) on the Danube.
In 971 his comparatively small army was defeated by a Byzantine force under the emperor John I Tzimisces and Svyatoslav was compelled to abandon his claim to Balkan territory.
In the spring of 972 while Svyatoslav was returning to Russia with a small retinue he was ambushed and killed by the Pechenegs (a Turkic people) near the cataracts of the Dnepr.
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