My brother in climate change, we don’t always have to pick a team. We can say neocolonialism/imperialism is bad, no matter by whom it is perpetrated.
The size of the economy of a country trying to profit from another does not have any impact on this. It is completely possible to say it is reprehensible of France to try and benefit from an African country, exactly in the same way as it would be for Russia to do the same thing, maybe with the same methods, maybe with other methods.