Bulgaria will hold two-day national celebrations starting August 20 to mark the 134th anniversary of the the heroic Shipka Pass Battle during the 1877-1878 Liberation War.

The event will be held under the auspices of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and will bring together over 200 official guests.

The festivities will start at 11 am on Saturday with the opening of a thematic exhibition and will culminate in a Sunday reenactment of the the historic battle of the Russian-Turkish War by members of the National Association "Tradition" from all over Bulgaria.

The Shpka pass turned out to be of strategic importance for the outcome of the twelfth war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire but it was initially guarded mostly by the regiments of the Bulgarian "opalchentsi", or volunteers, as well as smaller numbers of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Finnish soldiers from the Russian Empire's army.

This force of a total of about 7 000 armed forces faced almost 40 000 Ottoman Turkish troops, but managed to hold its critically important positions until the arrival of the Russian army of General Radetski.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 ended with the San Stefano Peace Treaty of March 3, 1878, which liberated Bulgaria from Ottoman Turkey.