Over the past four years, 52,000 hectares of new vineyards have been planted in the country, doubling the share of grapes in the export of fruit and vegetables.

About a fifth of Uzbekistan's labour force is employed in agriculture, a sector which makes up about a quarter of GDP.

Moody's said it expected Uzbekistan's GDP growth to rebound to 5.5 percent in 2021 and 6.3 percent in 2022.

While Russian and Soviet leaders generally gave the nod to the ethnic differences with other nations with very different ethnicities, languages or religions in their midst, this did not extend to Ukrainians.