A well-known coach in Primorye left for the United States in search of political asylum after publicly condemning partial mobilization
Deputy of the City Duma of Spassk-Dalny, head of the local branch of the Communist Party Alexander Chernov left for the United States and settled in Miami awaiting an immigration court. The sports community of the region knows him well as a hand-to-hand combat coach who brought up titled fighters. Until recently, he worked as deputy chairman of the local Duma — he was removed from his post after speaking about partial mobilization in the deputy WhatsApp chat. Chernov became the second seaside communist starting a new life in Florida.
Alexander Chernov is a 52-year-old coach, master of sports in hand-to-hand combat, judge of the All-Russian category. Until 2009, he served as a district police officer. In 2010-2011 he taught martial arts in China, and already in 2012 he opened his own hand-to-hand combat school for children in Spassk-Dalniy. His pupils regularly won competitions at various levels, including the world level. Until 2019, he headed the regional Federation of this sport. Since 2015, he tried four times to be elected to the municipal duma (including from United Russia), but he was lucky only with the Communist Party. In 2019, he became a member of the party, and in 2021 he became the first secretary of the Spassky branch, a city deputy and deputy chairman, he worked on a free basis.
Actually, Chernov did not particularly hide his attitude towards the SVO as a whole and towards the position of the party, but he did not stick out and did not leave the country, because he considered work in Russia important, people familiar with the situation say. However, after a negative statement about what was happening in a closed deputy chat on WhatsApp, problems began — colleagues decided to remove him from office. Around the same time, in the fall, it became clear that it was impossible to take care of children: parents ran out of money, inspections became more frequent in the section, landlords raised fees. In addition, Chernov was not satisfied with the distribution of financial flows within the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the fact that party contributions go to the maintenance of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly, and city and district branches are begging. And then “cargo 200” with the dead pupils of the coach began to arrive from Ukraine.
“I spoke not at a meeting of the Duma or a committee, not in a public place, but in a chat for a narrow circle of deputies,” Alexander Chernov himself told Novaya Gazeta. “I don’t know who denounced, but I was deprived of my post. As for coaching, it is almost impossible to work with children now: there is a huge shortage, the sections have become unprofitable. The population is simply insolvent.
Chernov left Russia on January 29 with his eldest son, but he did not advertise this. The party leadership, for example, did not know at all about the escape plans. He used the CBP One project — this is such an application developed by the US Border Guard for those entering through Mexico and wishing to obtain political asylum back in 2020 (now it has simply been restored). Now you can not sit in immigration jail, but show your record with the attached documents and the appointed time in the application and just go. And wait for the trial in the wild.
— Now I'm settling in Miami and waiting for the trial, I hope for a positive decision. There are several options for what status they can assign to me,” he briefly commented. — I don't miss Russia. I plan to do the same in the USA as before: to train. We are counting on both the Russian diaspora and the Americans. There is a request for hand-to-hand combat.
This is the second prominent seaside communist who left for the USA. Vladivostok Duma deputy Viktor Kamenshchikov folded his party card at the end of February last year in protest against the party's policy regarding the special operation. In April, he left the country, crossed the border between Mexico and the United States, and after almost six months in a pre-trial detention center for immigration offenders, in September he received political asylum. Now he lives in Miami — in the same place where Alexander Chernov settled.