Operation Serval France's intervention. On January 26, during the CELAC and European Union summit in Santiago de Chile, Colombia and Chile both expressed support for the French military intervention in Mali. Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, stated that "Colombia has suffered so much from terrorism that it can not disagree with this action." A 2013 Al Jazeera poll found that 96% of Malians in Bamako supported French intervention. Operation Serval Operation Serval () was a French military operation in Mali. The aim of the operation was to oust Islamic militants from the north of Mali, who had begun a push into the
Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War stationed in Syria. Prior to the intervention, Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War had mainly consisted of supplying the Syrian Army. At the end of December 2017, Russia said its troops would be based in Syria permanently. Shortly after the operation began, Russian officials were cited as saying that, apart from fighting terrorist organisations such as ISIL, Russia′s goals included helping the Syrian government retake territory from various anti-government groups that are labelled by the U.S. and its coalition as ″moderate opposition″, a broader geopolitical objective being to roll back U.S. influence. In his televised interview broadcast on 11