Cyrenaica the country after the fall of the Gaddafi government. Dr. Abubakr Mustafa Buera, head of the preparatory committee, was then elected first president for the National Federal Block, the first political group to call for federalism. On 6 March 2012 Ahmed al-Senussi, a relative of King Idris, was appointed leader of the self-declared Cyrenaica Transitional Council, a meeting of tribal and military leaders. According to the Council, Cyrenaica extended from the central coastal city of Sirte to the Egyptian border. In October 2013, "transitional" was dropped and the Council was renamed as "Council of Cyrenaica in Libya" (CCL). According to
Greeks in Russia and the Soviet Union joined the Byzantine military, becoming its finest soldiers. In 965 AD there were 16,000 Crimean Greeks in the joint Byzantine and Kievan Rus army which invaded Bulgaria. Subsequently, Byzantine power in the Black Sea region waned, but ties between the two people were strengthened tremendously in cultural and political terms with the baptism of Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus in 988 and the subsequent Christianization of his realm. The post as Metropolitan bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church was, in fact, with few exceptions, held by a Byzantine Greek all the way to the 15th century. One notable such prelate