He was declared a member of the “extremist formation” “Da Zorau”. According to the KGB, its members are him and Semyon Malashenkov.
He is known as a musician, a maker of gusli (a traditional psaltery) and a member of the band Stary Olsa. From 2002, Chumakov played and sang in the medieval music band Stary Olsa, using the gusli, pipes and other ancient instruments. In 2005, he founded the band Bokal Kola, which performed Belarusian folk dances to the accompaniment of the duda (bagpipes) and gusli, but the project was short-lived. From time to time, the musician performed solo with a programme of folk dances.
Ales also translated Irish heroic poetry into Belarusian. In the band Ceilidh Ceol, formed in the mid-2000s, he performed old Irish songs in Belarusian dedicated to freedom and the memory of ancestors. In 2020, his voice was heard in the Belarusian dub of the Netflix series The Witcher: he performed the well-known song Toss a Coin to Your Witcher in Belarusian translation.
On September 16, 2026, he was released following a visit to Minsk by John Coale, special envoy of US President Donald Trump, and taken to Lithuania.
