Uzbekistan supplies Ukraine with cotton fiber, textiles, petroleum products, and non-ferrous metals. There are currently 48 enterprises operating in Uzbekistan and 34 Uzbek companies in Ukraine. In 2018, Uzbekistan became the largest import country for Ukrainian sugar, which accounted for 60% of all Ukrainian sugar exports. In early October of that year, deliveries became complicated due to an investigation by the Verkhovna Rada into a supposed unfair advantage being given to Uzbek carmakers by providing them with various forms of support. The Oliy Majlis retaliated by imposing sanctions and import bans on Ukrainian sugar and pharmaceuticals.[2] The crisis ended in December when the Joint Ukrainian-Uzbek Commission convened to discuss cooperating on economic issues in the interests of both countries.[3]
Cultural relations
The first version of the monument to Taras Shevchenko monument was installed in Tashkent on 21 November 1920.[4] In October 2000, during the official state visit of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma to Uzbekistan, he and the President Islam Karimov laid a memorial stone at the site of the installation of the future monument to Shevchenko.[5] Two years later, on 20 December 2002, Kuchma unveiled the monument to Shevchenko made by sculptor Leonid Ryabtsev.[6][7] It was announced in 2016 that there was plans to open an Alisher Navoi Monument in Kyiv.[8]
According to Ukrainian and Russian archives, the first Ukrainians arrived in Central Asia in the mid-18th century. The first mass settlement of Ukrainians in Turkestan began in 1885 and by 1897, the first permanent settlements appeared in the Samarkand Region, with Ukrainian language schools and other Ukrainian traditions being observed.[9] During the Great Patriotic War, thousands of Ukrainians in the Ukrainian SSR were evacuated to Soviet Uzbekistan. In the aftermath of the 1966 Tashkent earthquake, over 2,500 Ukrainian engineers participated in the restoration of Tashkent. In January 2014, leaders in the Ukrainian diaspora spoke out to condemn an unauthorized rally in support of Euromaidan near the monument to Shevchenko, in which participants waved flags of Ukraine, Georgia and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.[10]
