The doyen of Bulgarian diplomacy Rayko Nikolov has died at the age of 96, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry has announced.

Rayko Nikolov was Bulgaria’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva for many years, as well as to the former Yugoslavia and to Italy, and was one of the people who shaped Bulgaria’s Balkan policy before the democratic changes in 1989. He was also the man who helped bring Sergei Antonov home, and the man who discovered Italy’s Celle di Bulgheria for Bulgaria, a municipality whose name is a reminder of the Bulgarian presence in these lands in the past. Researchers say the roots of the local population go back to Alcek, thought to be Khan Asparuh’s brother. They say that before Asparuh founded the First Bulgarian Kingdom in 681, Alcek settled in the lands of the Kingdom of the Lombards.

May he rest in peace!