Rus'-Byzantine Wars

The Rus'-Byzantine Wars were a series of conflicts and raids between the Byzantine Empire and the Rus' state of Kiev, opening with a Rus' naval raid on Constantinople in 860 that first brought the two powers into direct contact. Further campaigns followed under the Kievan rulers Oleg in 907 and Igor in 941 and 944, each aimed at securing favorable trade terms with Byzantium and resulting in negotiated treaties rather than lasting conquest. The most sustained conflict came under Sviatoslav I from 970 to 971, when Rus' forces that had seized Bulgaria clashed directly with a Byzantine army led by the emperor John I Tzimiskes, who defeated Sviatoslav and forced him to withdraw from the Balkans under the Treaty of 971. The rivalry gave way to closer ties in the following decades, culminating in the conversion of the Kievan ruler Vladimir I to Orthodox Christianity in 988, which bound the Rus' state culturally and religiously to Byzantium for centuries afterward.