An independence referendum took place in Iraqi Kurdistan (KRG) on 25 September. It met with unprecedentedly tough criticism from Turkey.

On 25 September, President Petro Poroshenko signed an Education Act, which had been adopted by the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) on 5 September.

The parliamentary elections in Germany have been won by the CDU/CSU, with 32.9% of the vote, their worst result since 1949; second place went to the SPD with 20.5%.

The Aurora 17 national military exercise is taking place in Sweden on 11-29 September, in parallel to the Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2017 manoeuvres.

Despite China’s growing involvement in Central and Eastern Europe, Beijing has not succeeded in making an attractive offer to the region’s EU member states.

On 8th September Glencore and Qatar Investment Fund announced that China’s CEFC would shortly finalise a transaction to buy 14.16% of shares in Rosneft.

On 28th August a meeting was held in France on limiting the migration from Africa to the European Union.

On 3rd and 4th September, electoral debates were held in Germany. These were the culmination of a rather sluggish campaign and might have an important impact on the results of the election.

In the first days of September, Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov spoke in defence of the persecuted Muslim Rohingya community in Myanmar several times.

At the BRICS summit in China Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would propose a draft resolution on the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces in Donbas.