site.btaUPDATED BTA Director General Visits Bulgarian Community in Olshanka, Ukraine

During his visit to Olshanka, 300 kilometres north of Odesa, Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev said Friday that Bulgaria still cares about its people in Ukraine 250 years after the first settlers in Olshanka, and that is why BTA has published an issue of LIK magazine for Bulgarians in Ukraine and has a National Press Club with a permanent correspondent in Odesa. Valchev is on a visit to Ukraine on the occasion of the Day of Bessarabian Bulgarians. 

The event in Olshanka was also attended by representatives of the four Bulgarian organizations in the Kirovohrad region, where the first Bulgarian settlements, Olshanka, Dobra and Stankuvata, were founded in 1774.

Valchev and BTA correspondent in Odesa Svetlana Dragneva laid flowers at the memorial on the central square in Olshanka for the 42 people who died from the 16 settlements in the municipality after Russia's invasion in Ukraine. Among them were six Bulgarians - Danil Dobrov (22 years old), Igor Vladov (33 years old) and Oleg Kirov (50 years old) from the village of Olshanka; Vasil Serdanov (18 years old) and Mykhailo Tanasov (21 years old) from the village of Dobra and Oleksandr Diordiev (44 years old) from the village of Stankuvata. Locals also said that two Bulgarians from Olshanka were captured and sentenced in Russia, and 3 more residents have disappeared without a trace.

According to the last population census in Ukraine from 2001, 2,305 people live in Kirovohrad region, but according to unofficial local data, there are more than 4,000 people in the villages of Olshanka, Dobra, Stankuvata and Mala Olshanka alone.

At his meeting with about 50 representatives of the Bulgarian community in the villages of the Olshanka municipality , Director General Valchev spoke about BTA's efforts to collect and distribute news about the Bulgarians in Ukraine, both about the victims and about the daily air raids during the days of the war, as well as for the preservation of Bulgarian traditions and history.

Valchev and Dragneva also laid flowers to the monument to Bulgarian national hero Hristo Botev, which was erected in 2010, and visited the Saint John the Merciful church which has a mural of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius and a display case of land from the ancestral home of Bulgaria, Alfatar, where the first settlers came from. The guests from Bulgaria also visited the Ukrainian-Bulgarian Museum, which has a collection of Bulgarian objects, including a Pravets computer from the 1980s.

"BTA’s National Press Club of BTA is trying to contribute to more information from Bulgaria aimed at Bulgarians in Ukraine - about the opportunities for education, work and business in Bulgaria, and most importantly this information will help more young Bulgarians from Ukraine to get a good education in Bulgarian universities, which they can use for the reconstruction of their homeland after the end of the war," said Valchev. According to local residents, five young people (4 boys and 1 girl) from Olshanka have continued their education in the last 3 years in universities in Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna.

Valchev noted that more information from the Bulgarian-populated areas of Ukraine would be useful for the Bulgarians in Bulgaria to learn more about how they can get involved in the reconstruction of the areas with Bulgarian communities.

The BTA Director General spoke about the upcoming concert in Odesa, organized on Saturday next to the agency's National Press Club on the eve of the Day of the Bessarabian Bulgarians. On October 29, 1838, the Bolhrad Cathedral of the Holy Transfiguration was consecrated after being built with funds of the Bessarabian Bulgarians who migrated from Bulgaria in the 18th-19th centuries. At the invitation of the BTA, singer Desi Dobreva will visit from Bulgaria and will perform free of charge. Bulgarian ensembles from the Odesa Region - from Bolhrad, Kamchik and Kulevcha - will also take part in the concert. Valchev said he had spoken to Yanka Gospodinova, the Mayor of Alfatar (Northeast Bulgaria), where the settlers in Olshanka migrated from, to organize a commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the resettlement. "I hope that this will be done as soon as possible in peace here," said the BTA Director General.

Representatives of Bulgarian organizations in the region also addressed the event talking about the history of those societies and their cultural ties with Bulgaria.

Acting Kirovohrad Mayor Sergey Pirozhenko thanked BTA and personally Kiril Valchev for the initiative for the event. "Your presence here shows that you support us in these difficult times," he added.

Deputy Mayor Sergey Bebek [name might be misspelled] welcomed the guests of the event and called for unity. "Only with joint efforts will we be able to preserve what we have," he said.

Local Bulgarian folk ensembles performed Bulgarian songs and choirs. "The songs we heard in Olshanka sing about the memories of our ancestors, about proud craftsmen and strong women, strong people - good Bulgarians, about the invincible Bulgarian spirit. It is exciting to hear that our compatriots here think of us as a people far from our homeland and the fact that they dream of Bulgaria should make us see it as a dream come true," said Valchev.

BTA representatives donated to the library in Olshanka and the Bulgarian organizations classic Bulgarian literature books, as well as books published on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Agency. Each of the four Bulgarian organizations also received a medal and a postage stamp dedicated to the 125th anniversary.