Stephen James Hubbard, the 74-year-old retired American teacher freed last week by Russia after the intervention of President Trump, said he sometimes lost hope over the more than four years he was imprisoned on fabricated charges of being a Ukrainian mercenary. He read his mother’s Bible, which his captors let him keep. He spoke no Russian and barely communicated with anyone. Once, he was allowed to call one of his sons for about a minute.
But in mid-October, his Russian guard came and fitted him for a new coat. The guard leaned forward and whispered one English word into Mr. Hubbard’s ear: “Home.”
“I’ve been told many times I was going to be set free,” Mr. Hubbard said, describing his reaction to the news from the guard. “So I’m just waiting to see if it happens, and I can believe it if it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s OK.”
In his first interview since being freed on Oct. 21, Mr. Hubbard declined to make any political statements about Russia, Ukraine or the war. He did not want to talk about how he felt when Russian soldiers essentially abducted him from his home in Ukraine. Nor did he want to talk much about his treatment in Russia, adding that he did not want to jeopardize the release of any of the other Americans being held there.
“I have sympathy for Russian prisoners in Ukraine and Ukrainian prisoners in Russia,” Mr. Hubbard said. “Prison life for anybody is terrible, and I wouldn’t wish it on my enemy.”
Mr. Hubbard, who spoke from Washington, D.C., on a video call, wore a brown plaid shirt bought for him by the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, and his old gray Irish cap, which his son in Japan had passed to him through the State Department. He said he looked forward to meeting President Trump at the White House, likely on Friday, and credited the U.S. president with his freedom. He also said he hoped his release would improve the relationship between Russia and America and help get more Americans back home. At least seven other U.S. citizens are still being held in Russia.
Mr. Hubbard was the only American designated as “wrongfully detained” in Russia by the U.S. State Department, meaning that the government believed the charges against him were false. Because of that, he became a top priority for return.
Releasing him came at little cost to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, though Russia got no one in return. The move earned Mr. Putin good will with Mr. Trump, who had personally asked for Mr. Hubbard’s release. Mr. Trump, who eased sanctions against Russia this month, has argued that he alone has the needed relationship with Mr. Putin to get him to end the war started by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost five years ago.
Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, picked up Mr. Hubbard when he visited Mr. Putin in St. Petersburg to discuss new ideas to end the war. At the time, Mr. Witkoff thanked Mr. Putin for releasing Mr. Hubbard and praised him as a “humanitarian,” a description both Democrats and Republicans criticized.
Mr. Witkoff has previously been accused of being overly fawning to Mr. Putin, especially galling to Ukrainians and their allies because Mr. Witkoff, along with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, are the key U.S. negotiators working to end the war.
Mr. Hubbard, a Michigan native, became an unlikely pawn in that war.
He had lived all over the world. Mr. Hubbard taught English for years in Japan and raised a son there. Then he moved for a time to Cyprus, where another son lived. In 2021, Mr. Hubbard moved to the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium to be with a Ukrainian woman he met in Cyprus. She returned to Cyprus in the run-up to the war, but Mr. Hubbard stayed in Izium.
He had just turned 70 when the Russians invaded in February 2022, too old to enlist in any Ukrainian military unit. Text messages between him and his son in Japan in the early weeks of the war showed no evidence he had joined the Ukrainian military. Mr. Hubbard told his son he went to church and that all was well, but said he had a hard time finding food. Once, he said, he bought caviar “for nutrition.”
The Russian authorities said Mr. Hubbard had been arrested at the home of an acquaintance about five weeks into the full-scale war, that he had been manning a military checkpoint and that he had joined a regional territorial unit to defend Ukraine. He was the only American captured in Ukraine during the war and taken to Russia.
Mr. Hubbard did not want to talk about the circumstances of his arrest.
Former Ukrainian prisoners of war who were held with Mr. Hubbard had told The New York Times that he was tortured. They said he was beaten, sometimes starved and forced to sing the Russian anthem.
In the interview, Mr. Hubbard said some of those claims were exaggerated. He said he was beaten by Russian guards when he was a prisoner of war, but “not severely.” He said he was fed three times a day, but not enough — only bread, porridge and sometimes fish or meat.
“We got enough to live, but it wasn’t fulfilling,” he added.
Mr. Hubbard confirmed that he was forced to sing the Russian anthem.
In October 2024, he was sentenced to almost seven years in a penal colony. Unlike most other U.S. prisoners in Russia, Mr. Hubbard was placed in the general prison population. At times, neither the U.S. Embassy nor Mr. Hubbard’s family knew where he was.
Mr. Hubbard said it was stressful being held alone, unable to talk to anyone or fully understand what was happening. He said he was given several books — an easy-to-read English version of the New Testament, an English history book by a Russian author, and an eighth-grade English textbook for Russian students. “But it was English, so it was good,” he added.
He said he was treated better after being sentenced than he had been as a prisoner of war. He was allowed to call his son in Cyprus once. He was also allowed to pass messages back and forth to family members through the U.S. Embassy about every six months.
Mr. Putin’s decision to unilaterally release Mr. Hubbard seemed part of an effort by the Trump administration and Mr. Putin to show humanitarian dividends from their diplomacy efforts, despite complaints that Mr. Trump has repeatedly sided with Russia and sidelined Ukraine.
Earlier in October, in a bid to lower diesel prices in the run-up to U.S. midterm elections, Mr. Trump announced that the United States would buy Russian diesel fuel. He also suspended the imposition of new sanctions on Russia under a new bipartisan law, then called on Ukraine to replace President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Putin’s nemesis.
Ukraine said the United States had temporarily cut off intelligence sharing, temporarily limited the military version of the satellite internet service Starlink and suspended delivery of Patriot interceptors, the main defense Ukraine has against Russian ballistic missiles. Although the military satellite service and intelligence sharing have been restored, relations between Ukraine and the United States, once Ukraine’s top ally, remain tense.
Mr. Hubbard said he first learned from his guard on Oct. 15 that he might be going home. From his cell in the IK-12 penal colony in Mordovia, the southwestern Russian region commonly referred to as “prison land,” he was driven in a prison van to Moscow. There he was held for five days before being driven to St. Petersburg. The whole time, he was not sure if he would actually be released.
Mr. Hubbard was flown to Texas for a three-day medical and psychological evaluation. He saw two of his sons and flew to Colorado to visit his sister, before coming back to Washington with his sons.
“I’m very happy to see them all,” he said. “I never expected to see them again.”
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