Stephen Hubbard Released: Russia Frees American Teacher Held Since 2022
A Michigan native who taught English in Ukraine, American teacher Stephen Hubbard regained his freedom after more than four years in Russian hands.
The retired American schoolteacher is 74, Stephen Hubbard was released on Wednesday, ending more than four years in Russian custody. Putin announced the decision as he opened talks in St. Petersburg with Steve Witkoff, the American special envoy, who is in Russia to discuss possible peace negotiations over Ukraine. Hubbard had already been taken to Pulkovo Airport, Putin said. Witkoff thanked him and said Hubbard was on his way home to his family. President Donald Trump said no prisoner swap was involved.
Who is Stephen Hubbard?
Hubbard comes from Big Rapids, Michigan. Evidence shows that he served in the United States Air Force and the National Guard. He then went on to earn a Master’s degree in English before spending twenty-five years teaching the English language in Japan. He later moved to Cyprus. In 2014, he moved again to Izyum, Ukraine, in the eastern part of Ukraine, where he lived with his Ukrainian girlfriend. He had little money at his disposal. His sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, said in 2024 that he survived on a pension of about $300 a month and had very few contacts in the area. The last time they communicated was in September 2021.
Capture and trial
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and took Izyum about two months later. Ukrainian forces won the city back in September. By then Hubbard was in Russian custody.
US citizen Stephen Hubbard, accused of serving as a mercenary for Ukraine against Russia in the course of a military conflict, appears in a court hearing, in Moscow, Russia October 7, 2024, in this still image from archive video. Moscow City Court/Handout via REUTERS.
Russian state media said he was detained in April 2022 and claimed he had been staffing a Ukrainian military checkpoint. How he was actually captured has never been independently confirmed.
Two videos surfaced. One shows a man being asked about Putin and the war, and his sister said she recognized Hubbard. In the other, a man who appears to be him has his hands bound and is struck with a sandal. Nobody has verified when or where either was recorded.
Russia only publicly confirmed that it held him in September 2024.
The trial took place behind closed doors. In October 2024, a Moscow court convicted Hubbard of working as a mercenary and sentenced him to six years and 10 months. Prosecutors said he joined a Ukrainian territorial defense unit, was given training, weapons, and ammunition, and was promised $1,000 a month. He was the first American known to have been convicted of fighting for Ukraine in the war. State media reported that he pleaded guilty. His sister did not accept that. She described a man with pro-Russian views who was unlikely to pick up a weapon in his seventies.
His lawyer in the United States, Martin De Luca, said Hubbard called the charges false and denied ever belonging to a combat or military unit. Russian soldiers took him from his home, the lawyer said. Washington has called the charges fabricated.
The diplomacy
In January 2025 the State Department classed Hubbard as wrongfully detained, which opened the way for formal negotiations. He was the only American Washington had put in that category in Russia. The department said Russia refused to let American officials see him.
He was moved through at least five detention centers before his trial. His legal team found out only in April 2025 that he was being held in the Mordovia region, east of Moscow, an area known for harsh prisons. Days before Wednesday’s announcement, Trump said peace efforts with the Kremlin included hostage negotiations. He did not say whose release he meant.
The meeting with Putin was Witkoff’s ninth in person.
Witkoff pressed Russia to consider restarting three-way talks with Ukraine and the United States and said he had brought documents with ideas for a settlement. Putin answered with offers of his own: help on American concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, and large fertilizer shipments for American farmers. He also floated a meeting with Trump in China next month, possibly with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Moscow’s move looks like a goodwill gesture. It comes as concern grows in Kyiv, where officials fear Washington is softening toward Russia. Relations between the United States and Ukraine have worsened since Trump announced a diesel export deal with Moscow earlier this month, and Ukraine has complained of disruptions to intelligence sharing and military satellite communications.
With Stephen Hubbard released, the question is whether the St. Petersburg talks produce anything on the war itself.
