Firstly, the French troops were invited by Mali’s government to help it put down its jihadist insurgents. The Russian ones were invited, in turn, for the same reason, after a media-propaganda campaign by Russia that played on historic animosity dating from the colonial period. A propaganda campaign filled with angry rhetoric and sounding much like your rant.

Meanwhile, Mali is still a semi-failed state with a jihadi problem which was caused by neither France nor Russia. And on top of that it now has brutal boorish Russian mercenaries instead of generally well-behaved French regular soldiers. Mali got a terrible deal and it was their own fault.

You know why I’m not embarrassed to say that? Precisely because I’m not a colonialist. I believe that Mali is not a child, it’s an adult. It has agency, it’s not a colony of anyone, it’s a sovereign country that can make choices for itself. If anyone’s views here are colonialist, it’s yours.