Havard-educated Sandu won last year’s presidential election by a landslide against Socialist Igor Dodon – widely viewed as Russia’s man in the country sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania.

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

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.

Lukashenko has been engaged in retrenchment since the EU imposed new sanctions aimed mainly at the ex-Soviet state's exports.

Kazakhstan plans to boost refining volumes by 7.6 percent year-on-year to 17 million tonnes and increase production of refined products by 7.8 percent.