Russia frees retired US schoolteacher Stephen Hubbard

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Wednesday that US citizen Stephen Hubbard, who had been detained in Russian custody since 2022, had been freed and was currently at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport. Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired US schoolteacher from Michigan, had been serving a nearly seven-year prison sentence after being convicted of mercenary activity at a closed-door trial.

He was initially arrested in April 2022 in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum, where Russian prosecutors claimed he had been manning a Ukrainian military checkpoint. Hubbard's arrest stemmed from allegations that he had joined a Ukrainian territorial defense unit, received training, weapons, and a monthly salary of $1,000. His US-based lawyer, Martin De Luca, previously maintained that the charges against Hubbard were false and that he was never part of any combat or military unit.

Hubbard, who had served in the US Air Force and National Guard and held a master's degree in English, had earned international recognition as the sole US prisoner designated as "wrongfully detained" by Washington. Upon his release, Putin proposed a meeting with US President Donald Trump in China, with the Kremlin also suggesting the possibility of three-way talks involving Russian President Xi Jinping during an APEC summit in China next month.

In addition, Putin offered to discuss restoring economic cooperation between Moscow and Washington. The meeting in St. Petersburg, Putin's ninth in-person encounter with Witkoff, began with Russia's goodwill gesture of releasing Hubbard.