 The USSR being one of the major supporters of independent Algeria, the economic connections between the Soviet Ukraine and Algeria were fairly significant, since a large portion of Soviet industries (in particular, of the aerospace industry), as well as the major port of Odessa were located in that republic.After Ukraine declared its independence, economic connections between the two countries continued, Algeria and Egypt remaining, as of the early 2000s, the two most important trade partners of Ukraine in the region of Africa and the Middle East.Political contacts between the two countries lagged the development of economic contacts; it was not until 2002 that the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko visited Algeria the first.