The expedition is documented in the Life of Saint George of Amastris, a hagiographic work describing the Rus' as "the people known to everyone for their barbarity, ferocity, and cruelty".
According to the text, they attacked Propontis (probably aiming for Constantinople) before turning east and raiding Paphlagonia some time after the death of St. George (ca.
Notably, the 15th century Slavonic Life of St. Stephen of Sugdaea records the invasion led by a certain Bravlin of the Rus', who supposedly devastated Crimea in the 790s, but this does not feature in the ancient Greek recension of the work.
Thus, rejecting Vasilievsky's arguments as to authorship and date of the work, he identified the Paphlagonian expedition described in the Life with the raid in 860 that reached Constantinople.
[2] Constantine Zuckerman, however, maintains a higher dating of the sack of Amastris to the 830s and holds the 838 embassy of the Rus' to Constantinople, as recorded in the same entry of the Annals of St. Bertin, to be an attempt at negotiating a peace treaty with Byzantium.