Prigozhin was born in the former Soviet Union and served ten years in prison when he was younger. After he was freed from jail, he ran a hot dog stand before becoming the owner of several fancy restaurants in Saint Petersburg. His restaurants brought Prigozhin into close contact with Putin.
I feel like we missed a few steps on the way there, but it’s still an interesting origin story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
Born to a poor ethnic Georgian family in the town of Gori […], Stalin joined the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party […] and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets.
Local thugs/mafia-leaders raising to power in Russia/USSR is not a new thing.
Yeah, Western leaders are saints
Maybe. But we were talking about Stalin here.
What you call ‘whataboutism’ we call ‘double standards’ or ‘hypocrisy’
