Ivory Coast is the latest West African nation to expel troops of former colonial power after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Ivory Coast has announced that French troops will leave the country this month after a decades-long military presence, becoming the latest African nation to downscale military ties with its former coloniser.

In an end-of-year address to the nation on Tuesday, President Alassane Ouattara said the 43rd BIMA marine infantry battalion at Port-Bouet in Abidjan – where French troops were stationed – “will be handed over” to Ivory Coast’s armed forces as of January 2025.

“We can be proud of our army, whose modernisation is now effective. It is in this context that we have decided on the concerted and organised withdrawal of French forces” from Ivory Coast, Ouattara said.

France, whose colonial rule in West Africa ended in the 1960s, has nearly 1,000 soldiers in Ivory Coast, according to reports.

Ivory Coast is the latest West African nation to expel French troops after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. In November, within hours of each other, Senegal and Chad also announced the departure of French soldiers from their soil.

On December 26, France returned its first military base to Chad, the last Sahel nation to host French troops.

Ivory Coast remains an important ally of France. The downscaling of military ties comes as France tries to revive its waning political and military influence on the African continent by devising a new military strategy that would sharply reduce its permanent troop presence across the continent.

France has now been kicked out of more than 70 percent of African countries where it had a troop presence since the end of its colonial rule. The French remain only in Djibouti, with 1,500 soldiers, and Gabon, with 350 personnel.

Analysts have described the developments as part of the wider structural transformation in the region’s engagement with Paris amid growing local sentiments against France, especially in coup-hit countries.

After expelling the French troops, military leaders of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have moved closer to Russia.

“It Ends With Us” director Justin Baldoni sued The New York Times for libel on Tuesday over its story on allegations that he sexually harassed and sought to smear the reputation of the film’s star, Blake Lively.

The lawsuit seeking at least $250 million was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the next major move in a growing story that has made major waves in Hollywood. It alleges the Times and Lively coordinated a smear campaign against Baldoni and his nine fellow plaintiffs.

The Times stood by its reporting and said it plans to “vigorously defend” against the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs include the film’s lead producer Jamey Heath, its production company Wayfarer Studios, and crisis communications expert Melissa Nathan, whose text message was quoted in the headline of the Dec. 21 Times story: “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”

Written by Megan Twohey, Mike McIntire and Julie Tate, the story was published just after Lively filed a legal complaint that is usually a predecessor to a lawsuit with the California Civil Rights Department over her alleged treatment.

Both her legal complaint and the Times story allege Baldoni enlisted publicists and crisis managers in a plan to destroy Lively’s reputation if she went public with her on-set concerns.

Baldoni’s lawsuit says the newspaper “relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives. But the Times did not care.”

A spokesperson for the Times, Danielle Rhoades, said in a statement that “our story was meticulously and responsibly reported.”

“It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error,” the statement said.

But the lawsuit says that “If the Times truly reviewed the thousands of private communications it claimed to have obtained, its reporters would have seen incontrovertible evidence that it was Lively, not Plaintiffs, who engaged in a calculated smear campaign.”

Lively is not a defendant in the lawsuit. Her lawyers said in a statement that “Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint.”

The romantic drama “It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel, was released in August, exceeding box office expectations with a $50 million debut. But the movie’s release was shrouded by speculation over discord between Lively and Baldoni. Baldoni took a backseat in promoting the film while Lively took centerstage along with her husband Ryan Reynolds, who was on the press circuit for “Deadpool & Wolverine” at the same time.

Lively came to fame through the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” and bolstered her stardom on the TV series “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012. She has since starred in films including “The Town” and “The Shallows.”

Baldoni starred in the TV comedy “Jane the Virgin,” directed the 2019 film “Five Feet Apart” and wrote “Man Enough,” a book pushing back against traditional notions of masculinity. He responded to concerns that “It Ends With Us” romanticized domestic violence, telling the AP at the time that critics were “absolutely entitled to that opinion.”

He was dropped by his agency, WME, immediately after Lively filed her complaint and the Times published its story.

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Associated Press writer Ryan Pearson contributed to this story.

As the 119th Congress prepares for an opening session on January 3rd, one Republican Congressman appeals to the incoming Trump administration to advance U.S. interests and target foreign malign actors.

In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson calls on Secretary of State nominee, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and National Security Advisor nominee, Representative Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) to “prioritize using U.S. law enforcement mechanisms to expose and dismantle Georgian sanctions evasion schemes, scam call centers, and other illicit Georgian Dream enterprises.”

FORMER GEORGIAN PRIME MINISTER SAYS NATION’S ELECTION WAS ‘RIGGED,’ AND ‘WRITTEN IN MOSCOW’

The letter comes after the United States imposed sanctions on Georgia’s former Prime Minister and Russia made billionaire, country’s de-facto ruler Bidzina Ivanishvili.

These operations, according to the congressman’s letter, enable Ivanishvili’s regime to profit from atrocities such as Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, “which is abetted by Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian complicity”.

On December 27th, Ivanishvili was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian federation”.

Congressman Wilson, who chairs The Helsinki Commission, calls sanctions on Ivanishvili a “significant step forward” and urges the incoming administration to extend sanctions to Ivanishvili’s immediate family members and cronies:

“This is a key opportunity to advance our shared goals of defending democracy and countering malign influence worldwide. The Axes of Aggressors would be deprived of a significant force multiplier should Georgia return to rule by the Georgian people,” – the letter reads.

GEORGIAN PM PRAISES COUNTRY’S PROTEST CRACKDOWN DESPITE US CONDEMNATION

Wilson’s letter is a continuation in the series of public outcries among Georgia watchers in the United States and Europe following Georgian Dream’s highly disputed victory in October parliamentary elections and government’s subsequent decision to pause its accession to the European Union that led to massive daily demonstrations throughout the country.  

Local and international election observers, including International Republican Institute’s (IRI) mission, concluded elections were “fundamentally flawed”.

Founder of the Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili speaks after the announcement of exit poll results in parliamentary elections, at the Georgian Dream party headquarters in Tbilisi, Georgia October 26, 2024.  (REUTERS/Irakli Gedenidze)

“Reflecting on what IRI’s mission observed and on what has transpired since the election, only new elections can restore the Georgian people’s confidence in their government’s legitimacy,” said IRI President Dan Twining.

Despite domestic and international calls for new elections, a single party parliament conveyed to anoint the only presidential candidate, former soccer player and a hard-line West critic Mikheil Kavelashvili on December 29th in an inauguration ceremony, visibly missing foreign dignitaries and guests.

Georgian Dream officials have repeatedly downplayed the prospect of U.S. sanctions. Minutes after the Treasury’s announcement, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze claimed – “in reality, nothing has changed”.

RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER BLASTS UKRAINE PEACE DEAL REPORTEDLY FLOATED BY TRUMP’S TEAM: ‘NOT HAPPY’

Kobakhidze, as well as other party leaders, also voiced optimism about “positive changes” after President Trump will take office on January 20th. However, this scenario is unlikely, according to Laura Linderman, Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.

“Given that Trump’s national security team would likely pursue an even tougher stance against countries aligned with China and Iran, Georgian Dream’s apparent calculation that they would receive more favorable treatment under a Trump administration is misguided,” Linderman tells Fox News Digital.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump looks on during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center on December 22, 2024, in Phoenix, Arizona.  (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

Linderman also says congressional Republicans are largely united in their support for Georgia’s democratic future and “Trump would be unlikely to expend political capital challenging the bipartisan consensus on Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic path”.

In recent years Ivanishvilis’s Georgian Dream government has increasingly isolated itself from the West and has aligned with authoritarian regimes. Georgia – until recently – a strategic U.S. partner has now formalized such partnership with China, has favoured Chinese companies over American investments, adopted Russian style “foreign agent” law, and suspended EU accession talks. This year alone, PM Kobakhidze has paid a number of visits to Iran. In Tehran he attended both – funeral of late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and inauguration of the new president Masoud Pezeshkian, who was sworn in with chants of “Death to America, Israel”

Heritage Foundations Senior Counselor and leading foreign policy expert James Carafano tells Fox News Digital, that regimes that are leaning on support from Moscow and Beijing are going to find that “playtime is over”, adding they cannot expect a “favorable or indifferent hand” from the Trump administration.

“If there are U.S. interests at stake, and there are some in Georgia, governments that want to lean on Moscow are likely to not only get a cold shoulder from Trump, they are probably going to get hit with the shoulder pads,” Carafano says.