President Vladimir Putin has canceled arranged meeting to France. Visit with French President Francois Hollande due to the opening of a Russian religious and cultural center should take place on 19 October in Paris. However, on Tuesday Russian News Agency TASS informed about the annulment of the meeting after the French government decided to bring up Syrian war issue during the talks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not provide a proper explanation due to the change of Putin's schedule.

On Monday in Istanbul, Turkey and Russia signed a contract to begin construction on a major undersea gas pipeline. The TurkStream will detour some of Russia's gas around Ukraine. The agreement will implement two pipelines, Which will be constructed under the bed of the Black Sea and will be directed to Turkey as well as the rest of Europe. The pipelines will be controlled and managed by Gazprom, a Russian state-owned gas monopoly. In addition, the two countries have agreed to move past tensions over Syria and work toward military and intelligence cooperation on the crisis. Although there are still strained relations between the two countries, Putin and Erdogan agreed to come to a comprise in order to find a solution of the humanitarian crisis. The hospitable relations come a little less than a year after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border.

The Head of the National Security Bureau of Poland Paweł Soloch visited Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv to discuss a closer military and security cooperation between the two countries. President Poroshenko reaffirmed strong political and cultural ties with Poland stressing gratitude for firmly backing Ukrainian stances concerning the situation in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. As far as EU sanctions against Russia is concerned, Head Soloch confirmed that there are no reasons to lift such a sanctions as long as the Kremlin will not comply with the Minsk agreements.

The ruling Georgian Dream party, led by Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, received 48.61% of the votes and won the Georgian parliamentary election that was held on 8 October 2016. The United National Movement (ENM), led by former president Mikheil Saakashvili, took the second place with 27.14% of the votes. According to the external monitors. this year’s parliamentary election was better organized, fairer and much free that previous ones. Besides the two parties, the “Alliance of Patriots of Georgia” that opposes the pro-Western path of development got 5% of the votes and crossed the threshold to gain seats in the Parliament of Georgia.

On Monday, 26^th September, a referendum about changes in the constitution took place in Azerbaijan. It was proposed by the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and concerned changes to 29 articles of the basic law of the country, including the extension of the presidential term from 5 to 7 years. The amendments will pass if they receive a majority of votes. Turnout has to reach at least 25% for the referendum to have an effect. If the changes are passed, a position of vice-president will be created, replacing the prime minister as the person directly below the president. Moreover, the presidential term will be lengthened from five to seven years, and the president will have the right to dissolve the parliament.

Western powers have reacted negatively after the Russian Parliamentary elections, which took place on September 18. Almost unanimously, European and American leaders refused to recognize the validity of the election results either as a whole or as regards the Duma deputies elected from Crimea. On September 20, the spokesperson of EU High Representative Federica Mogherini firmly declared that, given the limited permission of monitoring elections Moscow gave to the EU and OSCE/ODIHR observers, which excluded the territory of Crimea, elected deputies from the illegally annexed territories “will be treated in accordance with the policy of non-recognition by the EU”.