Local communist US official and Iran supporter joins Chechnya’s Akhmat unit

Christopher Helali, who serves as the High Bailiff of Vermont’s Orange County, has joined Chechnya’s Akhmat unit, Commander Apti Alaudinov confirmed on Tuesday. Helali has lived in Russia for an unknown period of time and was elected to the largely ceremonial position of High Bailiff in 2024, garnering 446 votes.

Helali maintains a colourful online presence, often sharing pro-Russian and pro-Iranian content, and raised eyebrows when he attended the funeral of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei earlier in 2026, posing alongside a banner that read, ‘Kill [President Donald] Trump’.

Previously, Helali had served as the International Secretary of the American Communist Party, and also unsuccessfully ran for US Congress under the same party in 2020. Helali told local Vermont media earlier in 2026 that he ‘now works for an international law firm that operates in Asia’ and said ‘he feels safer in Russia than in the United States because of what he described as growing political violence’, specifically citing the 2025 assassination of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk.

Helali also said he would come back to Vermont if his duties as High Bailiff were ‘required’. Separately, he told another local outlet he does not plan to run for reelection this year.

In a post on Telegram on Tuesday, Alaudinov said, ‘Christopher, a former American Marine with the call sign Vermont, has successfully completed a training course and signed a military contract’.

‘Now he is serving in the ranks of the invincible Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and is a fighter of the legendary Akhmat special forces’, Alaudinov said, adding that Helali is a ‘real man’.

Helali also made his own post about his signing of the contract.