Russia on Wednesday released an American man who was held for four years on what the State Department called fabricated charges that he was a Ukrainian mercenary. The release came after President Trump made a direct appeal to President Vladimir V. Putin to let the 74-year-old teacher, Stephen James Hubbard, return to the United States.
Mr. Hubbard was the only remaining American in Russia designated by the State Department as “wrongfully detained.” Mr. Putin told Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, at a meeting in St. Petersburg that Mr. Hubbard was at the airport — and Mr. Witkoff thanked the Russian leader for the American’s release, according to Russian state media.
The remarks came at the start of talks in St. Petersburg, where Mr. Witkoff had come to discuss new variants of a proposed plan to end the war that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Mr. Hubbard was released unilaterally by Russia, rather than in a prisoner swap, at a moment when Mr. Putin has scored a succession of victories in winning Mr. Trump over to Russia’s side in the conflict.
In the past two weeks, Mr. Trump has announced that the United States will buy Russian diesel fuel and suspend the imposition of sanctions under the Lindsey Graham Act, named for the pro-Ukrainian senator who died this year. Mr. Trump also called on Ukraine to replace President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Putin’s nemesis.
Turning over Mr. Hubbard, who was tortured, sometimes starved and placed in the general prison population in a country where he did not speak the language, came at little cost to Mr. Putin. But the move buys him good will with Mr. Trump, who is arguing that he alone has the relationship with Mr. Putin needed to get him to end the war.
Mr. Trump telegraphed that he had sought Mr. Hubbard’s release, talking to reporters about it on Tuesday, when the former teacher was still in captivity. But Mr. Trump didn’t mention that Mr. Hubbard was being held because Mr. Putin’s government had sought to take American prisoners for leverage.
In recent days, as he was moved out of a penal colony and prepared for release, it became clear that Mr. Hubbard’s value to Mr. Putin had changed. He was now more valuable to the Russian leader as a symbol of the renewed relationship with the U.S. president than as a pawn in negotiations.
Mr. Hubbard’s health is fragile. The Trump administration has pushed for his release since learning of his case, making it a priority, lawyers for Mr. Hubbard said. He will be flown to a State Department facility in Texas for evaluation and treatment.
The decision by Mr. Putin to release Mr. Hubbard came after a tumultuous 12 days in which Mr. Trump has repeatedly sided with Russia and sidelined Ukraine.
Ukraine said the United States had intermittently cut off intelligence sharing; limited its access to Starshield, the military version of the satellite internet service Starlink; and suspended delivery of its already limited supply of Patriot interceptors, the only defense Ukraine has against Russian ballistic missiles.
Mr. Hubbard was essentially abducted by Russian soldiers from eastern Ukraine shortly after Russia invaded and accused of fighting for Ukraine. Russian sentencing documents said he was given the call signs, or nicknames, of “Samurai” and “Ninja,” and that he manned a checkpoint on a bridge over a river.
This was highly unlikely.
Mr. Hubbard, a Michigan native, was living in the city of Izium, near Kharkiv, after a peripatetic life, teaching English for years in Japan and moving for a time to Cyprus, where one of his sons lived, before settling down with a Ukrainian woman. After that relationship ended, Mr. Hubbard opted to stay in Ukraine.
He had just turned 70 when the Russians invaded. His son in Japan told him to keep his head down, but Mr. Hubbard did not seem to understand that the war had started, text messages between the two men showed. Those messages also showed no evidence that Mr. Hubbard had joined the Ukrainian military. He told his son that all was well. He gave daily updates, like when he went to church. He had a hard time buying food, but said once that he bought caviar “for nutrition.”
The Russians said they arrested him inside the home of an acquaintance in April 2022.
Ukrainian prisoners of war who were held with Mr. Hubbard later told The New York Times that he had been repeatedly tortured because he was an American — beaten, forced to stand all day, given little food and poor medical care. In interviews after they were released, the Ukrainians said they feared for Mr. Hubbard’s life.
In October 2024, a Russian court convicted Mr. Hubbard of being a mercenary and sentenced him to almost seven years in a penal colony.
Unlike other Americans held in the Russian prison system, Mr. Hubbard was kept in the general population, his lawyers said. At times, his family had no idea where he was and the U.S. embassy had no access to him.
Mr. Hubbard was designated by the State Department as wrongfully detained in January 2025.
Shortly afterward, Martin De Luca, a former federal prosecutor instrumental in winning the release in February 2025 of another American held by Russia, started working on Mr. Hubbard’s case.
EPAM Law, a Moscow law firm that worked with Mr. De Luca on that earlier release, found out that Mr. Hubbard was being held in the IK-12 penal colony in Mordovia, the southwestern Russian region commonly referred to as “prison land.” In May 2025, Mr. Hubbard was allowed to call his son in Cyprus, Joseph Coleman.
Mr. Coleman, who is a Greek Orthodox priest, wrote a long letter to Mr. Putin in September, making a point of his Orthodox faith, similar to Russian Orthodox, and pleading for his father’s release.
“It’s amazing that he’s been released and we’re grateful to President Trump,” Mr. De Luca said. “I would characterize this as a small dividend on the hard road to peace.”
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