site.btaUPDATED BTA Signs Partnership Agreement with Folk Singer Ilia Lukov

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Friday signed a partnership agreement with folk singer Ilia Lukov. As part of this partnership, the singer will participate in a concert dedicated to the Day of Bessarabian Bulgarians, October 29, in Odesa, Taraclia and other settlements with Bulgarian communities in Ukraine and Moldova. These events will be organized by BTA's national press clubs.

BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said: "On the eve of Bulgaria's National Day, March 3, we will announce a joint initiative - a new partnership with Ilia Lukov focused on the Bessarabian Bulgarians, whose holiday is on October 29. Concerts by Ilia Lukov, featuring folk ensembles from Bulgarian villages in Odesa Region and around Taraclia, will take place at BTA's national press clubs in Odesa, Ukraine, and Taraclia, Moldova. We are also discussing concerts in Bolhrad, Izmail, Kamchyk. This is a gesture of solidarity with the Bulgarians in Bessarabia. Those in Ukraine have been living in a war for three years now.

"I would like to remind you that BTA opened a national press club in Odesa because, according to official census data, between 50,000 and 60,000 Bulgarians live there. If you ask local people, they will say the actual number is much larger. Some believe that if even one spouse in a marriage is Bulgarian, the entire family should be considered Bulgarian. In Odesa Region between 150,000 and 160,000 Bulgarians live outside the city of Odesa, according to Ukrainian census records. In the entire country, there are 200,000 Bulgarians. There is also the Bulgarian population of Moldova's Taraclia Region.

"Also, on October 29, 2024, BTA, in collaboration with Bulgaria's Consulate General and Consul Svetoslav Ivanov, organized a concert featuring Desi Dobreva. We were given permission by the mayor of Odesa to hold this celebration in one of the city's central squares," said Kiril Valchev.

"I am extremely grateful to Ilia Lukov for accepting this partnership, and I want to emphasize that he will be participating free of charge. At the same time, he has a very busy concert schedule. We have already signed agreements with other performers, ensuring systematic media coverage of their tours while managing the respective copyright arrangements. I appreciate that Lukov has allowed BTA to use materials related to his tours.

"We have similar agreements with Lili Ivanova, The Foundation band, Hilda Kazasyan, Desi Dobreva, to mention just a few. In fact, BTA now has 18 contracts in music," Valchev added.

He presented Lukov with BTA's first story about him, dating from 1994 when the singer won third place at the Pirin Folk song festival. "Since then, he has had an remarkably diverse and successful career," Valchev noted.

"I would like to thank Mr Valchev for extending a brotherly hand because, throughout these years of collaboration, we have always been accompanied by wonderful journalists and warm-hearted Bulgarians. They have stayed with us in the homes of those incredible Bulgarians, who have preserved their language and traditions in the best possible way. I often tell my colleagues that anyone who drinks from this pure spring, from our compatriots who have endured various spiritual trials yet managed to keep their heritage so pure, will understand its true value," said Lukov.

The singer recalled his first concerts in 1999 at the cultural center in Odesa and in Kamianka. He announced that on October 14, a concert titled "Ilia Lukov and Friends" will take place in Hall 1 of the National Palace of Culture (NDK), featuring, as he put it, "all our talented diaspora communities that are close to Bulgaria".

Later on Friday, Ilia Lukov recorded a greeting at BTA for Bulgarians in Odesa and other settlements in Odesa Region, who will celebrate Bulgaria's National Day, March 3, at an event organized by the city's Consulate General and BTA.

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To provide more information for Bulgarians in Ukraine and help communication between Bulgaria and them, especially during the war, BTA opened a national press club in the centre of Odesa in the spring of 2023. The press club has a permanent correspondent, Svetlana Dragneva, whose reports can be used freely by all Bulgarian media with attribution to BTA.

This is BTA's second national press club with a correspondent's bureau in Bessarabia, following the one in Taraclia, Moldova, which was inaugurated in 2022 in the presence of Bulgarian President Rumen Radev.

In the second half of June 2024, BTA organized the 19th World Meeting of Bulgarian Media in Odesa, Bolhrad and Izmail as a gesture of solidarity with the 150,000 Bulgarians living in Odesa Region. The meeting was mottoed "Media and Community", and the event was held in a hybrid format - on-site and via video conference. It took place against the backdrop of air raid sirens and the hum of electricity generators due to power supply restrictions.

Under bombardment, Bulgaria's national news agency organized a series of events for the Bessarabian Bulgarians in Ukraine. These included celebrations of Bulgaria's National Day on March 3 and Bessarabian Bulgarians' Day on October 29, book presentations on the war in Ukraine by Bulgarian writers Teodora Dimova and Yordan Eftimov, the opening of an exhibition at the Union House of Jewish Culture, arranged by the Sts Cyril and Methodius National Library to mark the 80th anniversary of the rescue of Bulgarian Jews, and meetings with Bulgarian communities in settlements in Odesa Region.

In March 2024, BTA initiated the placing of a memorial plaque of writer and journalist Aleko Konstantinov at the Faculty of Law of Odesa National University, where Konstantinov studied law between 1881 and 1885.

In February 2023, a year after the war began, BTA published a special issue of its LIK magazine in Bulgarian and English, dedicated to the Bulgarians in Ukraine. The magazine was presented in Odesa and Bolhrad. In 2024, it was presented in Vilshanka, where 250 years ago, in 1774, the first Bulgarian settlers arrived in Bessarabia.