A retired American teacher was freed from a Russian prison where he had been imprisoned for over four years on charges he was fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, US envoy Steve Witkoff announced Wednesday.
Stephen Hubbard, 74, was released from captivity and was at an airport waiting for a ride back to the US alongside Witkoff, who was in St. Petersburg meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I wanted to thank you very much. The president sends his thanks. Our whole nation sends it’s thanks,” Witkoff told Putin. “Because of you, he’s going home to his family.”
Hubbard, who served in the US Air Force and National Guard, was freed after President Trump revealed he had been negotiating the release with Putin.
“I’ve been talking to President Putin about Mr. Hubbard. I’ve been talking to him at length. I’ve asked him to release him. Let’s see what happens,” Trump told reporters at the White House Tuesday.
The Michigan native will fly out of St. Petersburg to Texas where he will receive medical treatment at a military hospital, CBS News reported.
Hubbard, who is in bad health, had been in Russian custody since he was nabbed from his home in Izyum, Ukraine, by Russian forces in April 2022.
The detention occurred just over a month after Russia’s large-scale invasion on its neighbor and the week Russia took occupation of the Kharkiv Oblast region for six months.
He had been living in the Ukrainian city of Izyum since 2014 and was accused of having signed up to be a mercenary with a Ukrainian territorial defense unit where he was allegedly promised $1,000 per month.
Hubbard’s family denied the accusations, saying he had shared pro-Russian sentiments and wouldn’t arm himself because of his age.
“He is so non-military,” his sister Patricia Hubbard Fox told Reuters by phone last month. “He never had a gun, owned a gun, done any of that…He’s more of a pacifist.”
Hubbard was sentenced to 6 years and 10 months in prison after he was convicted of the mercenary charge during a closed trial in Oct. 2024.
He was allegedly transferred around to several prisons before he wound up at a detention complex in the Mordovia region, east of Moscow, his lawyers told Reuters.
The US State Department designated Hubbard’s capture as wrongful in January 2025, allowing for government officials to start negotiations for his release.
Hubbard’s release comes at the beginning of talks between Witkoff and the Kremlin on the latest renewal of trade talks between the two countries to end the war in Ukraine.
Hubbard is the last American officially declared wrongfully detained to be released from Russian captivity.
With Post wires
