Our world is getting stranger by the day. Yesterday, U.S. President Donald Trump blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for causing the war with Russia. He says that President Zelenskyy should have done a deal with Putin to avert the war. What kind of deal? Are we living in an age of submissiveness now?

Blaming Ukrainians for resisting Russia’s colonization attempts is akin to telling Blacks in America that their ancestors were at fault for slavery. After all, Blacks were forcibly taken from their homelands and shipped across seas to distant lands. Russia, apart from destroying Ukrainian cities and killing tens of thousands of the country’s citizens, has captured thousands more and taken them against their will to Russia. In the case of Africans, it is unclear what kind of deal they could have made with their captors. But it follows from the accusation Trump has leveled against Ukraine that the onus was on Africans then to prevent slavery.

I have written extensively about the war in Ukraine since it began three years ago. I am steadfast in my belief that individuals and nations have the right to self-determination. For that reason, I can never accept the argument that so many people have made that Ukraine, as the smaller and weaker nation, should subordinate its interests to those of its larger and more powerful neighbor, Russia. Ukraine is a sovereign country and should be allowed to make its own choices and align itself with whatever friends it wants to associate with. And I can never agree with the notion that powerful nations like America are entitled to spheres of influence. The people of Brazil would feel extremely insulted if someone were to tell them what alliances they could join and what the size of their military should be. That is what Russia is asking of Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine has been quite a revelation for me. For decades, I heard many Africans pin every single problem they have on the continent on the historical crimes of slavery and colonialism. It has been shocking to hear some of these same Africans blaming Ukraine for not acceding to Russian demands and therefore precipitating the invasion. Some of Putin’s most vociferous cheerleaders, inexplicably, can be found in Africa.

Everything seems upside down in the world currently. But I am a deeply optimistic person so I am fully confident that sanity will be restored eventually. What I know I will not tolerate going forward are speeches about the ills of slavery and colonialism by some of these African apologists for dictators.