In the heyday of the bilateral relationship, trade between Ukraine and Uzbekistan — two nations that were Soviet republics — hit $2 billion yearly as recently as 2009, Uzbekistan’s Ambassador to Ukraine Alisher Kurmanov said.
Now, the volume has dropped to less than a quarter of that amount. They barely register in each other’s top 10 trading partners, while China and Russia are at or near the top of both lists. The short-term aim of Uzbekistan and Ukraine is to get the turnover up to $1 billion yearly from the current $450 million.
“Whether it’s education science and agriculture or trade, we had good relations,” Kurmanov said. The goal now: “Resurrection of our old ties to get back on track to what we used to have.”
That’s why Kurmanov took the posting in Kyiv, arriving in June 2020. He is one of Uzbekistan’s most experienced diplomats, having served as his Central Asian nation’s ambassador in Singapore, Korea and the United Kingdom and Ireland. The married father of two children is fluent in Russian, English and Arabic besides his native Uzbek.
He says mid-sized countries like Ukraine and Uzbekistan — with populations of 40 and 34 million, respectively — are not major geopolitical players. Therefore, he thinks their time is better spent on developing their economies. And both need lots of development. Both are rural, agrarian nations, although Uzbekistan is smaller — about 75% of Ukraine’s size. Both are poor and underperforming — about $60 billion in annual economic output for Uzbekistan and $160 billion for Ukraine. The Soviet Union relied heavily on both places for raw materials — “commodity appendixes,” as the ambassador put it. Uzbekistan supplied cotton, copper, gold, uranium, natural gas.
“We didn’t have too much industry,” the ambassador said. “We had the aviation industry, but that was shifted to Uzbekistan during World War II.”
Both nations are also trying to shake the harmful aspects of their Soviet legacies, which included Joseph Stalin’s purges, massive World War II casualties, repression of national history and the dominance of the Russian language. Uzbekistan suffered less than Ukraine, where at least 4 million people starved to death during the Holodomor and perhaps another eight million people were killed during World War II.
“We didn’t know the history. We weren’t allowed to know the history. I am just discovering myself, bit by bit,” Kurmanov told the Kyiv Post in an interview ahead of Uzbekistan’s 30th Independence Day on Sept. 1. “From the 10th to 12th centuries, great discoveries came from this part of the world. We have to discover our past and our pride.”
He said a good starting point for those who want to know more is the “Lost Enlightenment,” a book by S. Frederick Starr about Central Asian’s golden age, when Uzbekistan was at the center of the ancient Silk Road trade route linking Asia and the Middle East to the West.
Uzbek Ambassador to Ukraine Alisher Kurmanov
‘New Uzbekistan’?
Besides the dislocations caused by the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Uzbekistan remained isolated from much of the world for the next quarter-century.
Part of the reason is geography: Although it shares borders with the four other Central Asian nations and ex-Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, as well as Afghanistan on its southern border, Uzbekistan is landlocked.
But part of the reason is political. The rule of its first president, the late Islam Karimov (1938–2016) dated back to 1989, the last two years of the Soviet Union, when he led the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. The West considered Karimov to be a tyrannical dictator who killed or imprisoned his opponents and allowed no freedom of expression or media. After the 2005 massacre of hundreds of protesters in Andijan, his regime became an international pariah.
Now Uzbekistan is performing a delicate diplomatic dance — praising Karimov while also disavowing many of his policies in favor of democracy, human rights, global integration and an end to conflicts with its Central Asian neighbors.
Kurmanov said that most Uzbeks still revere Karimov, even five years after his death. He is credited with keeping Uzbekistan independent, economically stable, and with curbing Islamic radicalism in the secular yet primarily Sunni Muslim nation.
But Kurmanov conceded that Karimov closed off the nation from the rest of the world and engaged in unfortunate conflicts with Uzbekistan’s Central Asian neighbors over borders, environmental issues and infrastructure.
All of that is changing in the “new Uzbekistan” under the rule of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, a long-time prime minister under Karimov who has led the nation for the last five years. Mirziyoyev faces re-election on Oct. 24, 2021.
The ambassador said that Uzbekistan is opening up, democratizing, modernizing and living in greater harmony by finding compromises with its Central Asian neighbors, most demonstrably by opening borders to allow travel freely among the five nations.
“Today, Uzbekistan is becoming a country of democratic transformations, big opportunities, and practical deeds,” Mirziyoyev told the Yangi Uzbekistan newspaper in an interview published this month. “The New Uzbekistan is a state developing in strict compliance with the universally recognized norms in the field of democracy, human rights, and freedoms, on the basis of the principles of friendship and cooperation with the international community, the ultimate aim of which is to create a free, comfortable and prosperous life for our people.”
There is some backing for his claims from Western sources, including the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, which published a 32-page report last year headlined “Uzbekistan’s Transformation.”
Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic like Ukraine, celebrates its 30th Independence Day as a nation on Sept. 1, 2021.
‘Old Uzbekistan’ remains?
But critics say the “new Uzbekistan” still has too much of the “old Uzbekistan.”
According to an Aug. 10, 2021, article in Asia News, “only pro-government parties have been allowed to run candidates” in the October presidential election. “Any opposition was liquidated under the ‘father of the nation’ Karimov.”
The U. S.-based Freedom House — an international human rights watchdog — came to the same conclusion, classifying Uzbekistan as “not free.” Its 2020 summary, the latest available, says: “While ongoing reforms under Mirziyoyev have led to improvements on some issues, including a modest reduction in media repression and reforms that mandated more female legislative candidates, Uzbekistan remains an authoritarian regime with little movement toward democratization. No opposition parties operate legally. The legislature and judiciary effectively serve as instruments of the executive branch, which initiates reforms by decree, and the media remains tightly controlled by the state. Reports of torture and other ill-treatment remain common, although highly publicized cases of abuse continue to result in dismissals and prosecutions for some officials and small-scale corruption has been meaningfully reduced.”
In is 2021 World Press Freedom Index, the France-based Reporters Without Borders watchdog ranks Uzbekistan near the bottom in press freedoms — 157th out of 180, one notch above Belarus, where the election-stealing dictator Alexander Lukashenko imprisons, harasses — and some fear — murders journalists.
Reporters Without Borders, however, acknowledged the improvements under Mirziyoyev under the heading of “Delicate Thaw.”
“Five years after President Islam Karimov’s death in August 2016, a thaw is under way in what was one of the world’s harshest dictatorships. The last imprisoned journalists — some of whom were held for nearly 20 years — have been released but have not been rehabilitated. Access to websites that were censored for years has been unblocked but others remain inaccessible. Media registration has been made easier. There are now live political broadcasts and some journalists are now covering sensitive subjects such as corruption and forced labor,” the watchdog wrote. “But criticizing the highest level of government is still out of the question. And the authorities are in no hurry to carry out the necessary reforms to the laws that constrain the media. Surveillance, censorship and self-censorship are still present and the authorities maintain a significant level of control over the media. Bloggers are still being threatened or arrested. Uzbekistan has reopened its doors to foreign and exiled journalists but many journalists and media outlets, including the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, have found it difficult to obtain accreditation. It will be hard to fully restore press freedom without political pluralism and without justice for the dictatorship’s crimes. The road ahead is still long.”
Women perform during a reception at the Uzbekistan Embassy in Kyiv to celebrate the start of direct flights from Kyiv to Samarkand by Bees Airline on Aug. 10, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Kurmanov disputes critics
“This is wrong; this is absolutely wrong,” the ambassador said of Mirziyoyev’s critics. “There is no one who can match him in his eagerness to change Uzbekistan, his openness and his very strong trust into the new and democratic Uzbekistan.”
He said Mirziyoyev will easily win re-election in October not because he’s repressed opposition, but because he’s so popular.
“This is a new Uzbekistan absolutely. The genius of Mirziyovev is that he is a visionary. He served as prime minister and, before that, as a people’s deputy. He has first-hand knowledge of what to do and how it is to be done,” the ambassador said. “What’s happening today is Uzbekistan are real democratic changes. Press freedom is phenomenal. We are talking about Western-style democracy, universal human rights. It is very difficult and tough. We have to overcome obstacles. The largest obstacle is changing ourselves. We are at the beginning of a long process.”
Kurmanov acknowledged Uzbeks “are lagging behind the world” economically, he said these changes are taking place:
Rather than exporting most of its cotton, he said Uzbekistan has built a vertically integrated textile industry.
Rather than exporting natural gas, it’s processing gas and refining jet fuel for the commercial aviation industry.
Rather than just importing cars, it’s manufacturing at least 250,000 General Motors’ Chevrolet automobiles, many for export.
Rather than creating a class of oligarchs, as Ukraine did in its corrupt and uncompetitive privatizations of Soviet assets, Uzbekistan is now holding competitive open tenders for the sales of such plants as Coca-Cola.
While Uzbekistan, with an average monthly salary of $280, is poorer than Ukraine, where the average monthly salary is $500, the ambassador said wealth is much more evenly distributed in his nation.
Rather than closing its borders, it is opening them up to stimulate tourism, which Uzbekistan now considers “a strategic industry.” He said the country has dropped visa requirements for most nations, has “tourist police” designed to help visitors and has revamped the Tashkent International Airport, which he acknowledged used to be a bureaucratic and unfriendly place.
Just recently Bees Airline, for instance, announced the first-ever, non-stop flights from Kyiv to Samarkand, the cultural capital of Uzbekistan.
“We have to put the country back on the map,” he said. “We have to make it extremely friendly.”
He said the West has other misconceptions of Uzbekistan, including that it is far from everything. Looking at the world from Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, he said the nation sees itself at the center of the world and as a natural aviation hub “only seven hours from London and seven hours from Tokyo.”
Wounded in Afghanistan
The U. S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban to swiftly retake control this month, conjured up bitter images of the Soviet withdrawal of 1989. Much of that happened through the Friendship Bridge, a span over the Amu Darya River that connects Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
Kurmanov, the son of a diplomat who died many years ago, was born in Afghanistan in 1965. His family moved when he was only 3, but then returned there as a Soviet soldier at the age of 18. He was wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade and airlifted back to Uzbekistan, ending his military duty in 1983 and leaving a wound in his right knee that still gives him discomfort.
His earlier memories are of an Afghanistan that was “very peaceful and very dynamic as well.” Of today’s events, he said that the U.S. didn’t learn the lessons of the unsuccessful foreign intervention of the Soviets, who, in turn, repeated the mistakes of the British forces in the 19th century.
Kurmanov said the situation on the Uzbek-Afghan border is peaceful, in contrast to the scenes of chaos at the Kabul airport. Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry said in an Aug. 20 statement that it has assisted with the evacuation of nearly 2,000 people from Afghanistan by allowing transit through the country.
“In addition, a lot of work was also carried out with representatives of the Taliban movement to obtain security guarantees for the citizens of Afghanistan, who illegally crossed the Uzbek-Afghan border during these dramatic days,” the ministry wrote on Aug. 20. “As a result of agreements reached with representatives of the Taliban leadership to prevent any measures of violence, persecution, persecution against this category of persons, 150 Afghan citizens were returned to their homeland of their own free will.”
Bilateral relations
One Ukrainian who personifies the best of bilateral ties between the two nations was Nickolay I. Kuchersky (1937–2018), a Soviet business leader in uranium and gold mining in Uzbekistan. “He was a Ukrainian who brought the knowledge,” the ambassador said. Other shared ventures include a Tashkent aircraft factory that produced Illyushin jets and some components for the Antonov model.
But the number of Uzbeks in Ukraine and Ukrainians in Uzbekistan is estimated at only several thousand people in both countries. The ambassador said that “what needs to be done is to institutionalize our relationship,” noting the last high-level trade and investment meeting took place between the two countries 14 years ago.
Balancing Russia ties
But there are built-in limitations to resurrecting bilateral ties. Uzbekistan won’t take a stance on whether Crimea, illegally invaded and annexed by Russia in 2014, belongs to Ukraine. It also will not impose sanctions on the Kremlin either.
“We enjoy very good relations with Russia, a strategic and large trade partner,” Kurmanov said. “We have to cooperate.” He doesn’t believe that Russia would ever attack Uzbekistan and occupy its territory, as it is doing in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, three other ex-Soviet republics.
“Our current borders are inviolable,” the ambassador said, preferring to focus on the positives with each nation. “There is much more on our common agenda to achieve. We are not in conflict with anybody, absolutely.”
