Released by Moscow: the retired teacher Russia branded a mercenary

Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired schoolteacher, has arrived back in the United States after Russia released him from detention, an act President Vladimir Putin undertook at the start of talks on Wednesday with Steve Witkoff, special envoy to US President Donald Trump.

Hubbard grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan, and served in the US Air Force and National Guard, according to military records cited by the New York Times. He earned a master's degree in English and lived in Japan for 25 years teaching the language before moving to Cyprus and then, in 2014, to Izium in eastern Ukraine with a Ukrainian partner, according to his sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox. She told Reuters in 2024 that he subsisted on a pension of about $300 a month and had few connections with local people; the siblings last spoke in September 2021.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and captured Izium two months later. Ukrainian forces retook the city that September, but by then Hubbard was already in Russian custody. Russian state media said he had been detained in April 2022 and alleged he was manning a Ukrainian military checkpoint; Reuters could not independently establish the circumstances of his capture. Fox said she recognised her brother in a YouTube video showing a man being questioned about his views on Putin and the war, and another video showed him with his hands bound being struck with a sandal. Reuters 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 ten months. Prosecutors said he had joined a Ukrainian territorial defence 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, told Reuters in June 2025 that Hubbard had told him the charges were false and that he was not in any combat or military unit; he said Russian soldiers had simply seized him from his house.

In January 2025 Washington designated Hubbard as wrongfully detained, enabling the US government to pursue negotiations for his release. The State Department said Russia refused to grant US officials consular access. The New York Times reported in February 2025 that Hubbard had been moved through at least five Russian detention centres before his trial, and his lawyer said the legal team learned only in April 2025 that he was being held in a facility in the republic of Mordovia, east of Moscow.