President Vladimir Putin announced the release of American citizen Stephen Hubbard from Russian detention on Wednesday, at the start of talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Hubbard, 74, a retired schoolteacher from Big Rapids, Michigan, had spent roughly four years in Russian custody after being detained in April 2022 in Izyum, eastern Ukraine, according to Russian state media. He served in the US Air Force and National Guard, earned a master’s degree in English, and lived in Japan for 25 years teaching English before relocating to Cyprus and then Ukraine in 2014 with a Ukrainian partner, his sister Patricia Hubbard Fox said in 2024.
Fox said the siblings last spoke in September 2021, and that her brother survived on a pension of about $300 a month with few local connections. She recognized him in a YouTube video showing a man being questioned about his views on Putin and the war, and in another video where he appeared with his hands bound, being struck with a sandal. The outlet could not verify when or where the videos were recorded.
Following a closed trial, a Moscow court convicted Hubbard of being a mercenary in October 2024 and sentenced him to six years and 10 months in prison. Prosecutors claimed he had joined a Ukrainian territorial defense unit, received training, weapons and ammunition, and was promised $1,000 a month. Russian state media said he had pleaded guilty.
Fox questioned the reported confession, saying Hubbard held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to have taken up arms in his seventies.
Martin De Luca, his US-based lawyer, said in June 2025 that Hubbard had told him the charges against him were false and that he was not in any combat or military unit. De Luca cited Hubbard as telling him Russian soldiers had simply grabbed him from his house.
The State Department has said Russia refused to grant US officials consular access to Hubbard. In January 2025, Washington designated him as wrongfully detained, enabling the US government to pursue negotiations for his release. Reports said in February 2025 that Hubbard had been moved through at least five Russian detention centers before his trial. His lawyer said Hubbard’s legal team found out only in April 2025 that he was being held in a facility in the Mordovia region, east of Moscow.
Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022 and captured Izyum two months later. Ukrainian forces retook the city in September 2022, but Hubbard was already in Russian custody by then. The outlet could not independently establish the circumstances of his capture.