Russian authorities released a former American schoolteacher who was imprisoned in the early days of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, in a sign of warming ties between the Trump administration and Moscow.
Stephen Hubbard, 74, was convicted by a Russian court of working as a mercenary after Kremlin troops in 2022 invaded Ukraine and detained him in the eastern part of the country, where he had been living for years. The State Department designated him as wrongfully detained last year, and Hubbard and the U.S. have denied he was a mercenary.
President Trump said he asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to release him during a telephone conversation between the two leaders last week. The U.S. wasn't required to give anything in return, Trump said Wednesday on Truth Social. He later added that negotiations for the release would have halted had he imposed planned sanctions on Russia.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in St. Petersburg to meet Hubbard and is escorting him back to the U.S. The two men are traveling in separate planes with Hubbard set to land in Washington Wednesday evening, said Martin De Luca, a lawyer who worked on Hubbard's case.
Hubbard, whose health is fragile following his incarceration, will go on to a Texas rehabilitation center, De Luca said. His health declined due to his poor treatment in a Russian prison, according to three former prisoners held in the same jail.
Witkoff thanked Putin for releasing the American. "You talk so much about my president -- President Trump -- being a humanitarian. You also are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you and I thank you," said Witkoff, speaking across the table from Putin in a heavily gilded room.
Witkoff arrived in Russia Wednesday after holding talks in Oslo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the day before. He was met by his Russian counterpart, Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, at the airport in St. Petersburg. Jared Kushner, Trump's other envoy and son-in-law, didn't join him due to illness, Russian state media reported.
State media said that Putin intended to discuss with Witkoff the possibility of meeting Trump in China, a step that could bring him closer to his goal of meeting Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss an end to the conflict in Ukraine, without Zelensky.
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the Kremlin leader had proposed such a meeting.
The meeting gave both Putin and Witkoff a chance to praise growing ties between the U.S. and Russia in the energy sector and the potential for other economic deals that Russia has offered American businessmen. Putin said Russia was preparing its tankers for the first deliveries of diesel to the U.S., following a deal between the U.S. and Russian leaders that would roll back some sanctions to allow Russian fuel to go to the U.S.
Hubbard's release comes as the Trump administration has sought to boost ties with the Kremlin in recent weeks. The White House piled pressure on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian refineries, while Moscow's attacks on Ukrainian energy sites continued.
Trump has also halted the implementation of most sanctions that were set to be imposed on Russia under a bipartisan bill he signed last month. Republicans and Democrats criticized the move as too conciliatory toward Moscow.
In a Truth Social post earlier this week, Trump defended his actions, saying they were aimed at bringing Putin to the negotiating table to clinch peace in Ukraine. He also held out the possibility that his plans included a prisoner release. "Great progress is being made, and that includes current hostage negotiations!" he wrote.
The State Department said that Hubbard was the only U.S. citizen currently determined to be wrongfully detained in Russia.
Before his capture, the Michigan-born teacher had been living with a partner in eastern Ukraine and stayed there after they separated because his pension went further in the country, according to Roman Malakhov, who met Hubbard at a Russian penal colony while a prisoner of war.
That prison compound, around 300 miles east of Moscow, is considered to have some of the harshest conditions among institutions that hold prisoners related to the war in Ukraine, according to former prisoners and Ukrainian prosecutors. Incarceration "was a particularly brutal period for him for many years and at an advanced age," said De Luca, the lawyer.
Hubbard was often isolated and bullied by prison guards, said Malakhov and two other Ukrainians who met him in the jail. Guards would scream abuse at him and sing him "American Boy," a song released in the dying days of the Soviet Union about a young woman looking to leave Moscow for the U.S. Like all Ukraine-related inmates in that jail, Hubbard was poorly fed and his health began to fail, said Malakhov. At one stage he contracted scabies, an itchy rash caused by mites.
Hubbard had mobility issues and could barely walk while at this camp, according to another former prisoner of war. He was badly treated by a doctor at the camp, the former POW said.
Joseph Coleman, Hubbard's son, said that he talked to his father during his flight to the U.S. and that he sounded well compared with the last time they spoke a year ago.
"He was slow to speak and weak in his diction [at that time]...today he seems OK," said Coleman, who is an Orthodox priest in Cyprus.
Russia has released a steady trickle of U.S. prisoners, typically as part of prisoner swaps, since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago.
That included U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who was exchanged for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in late 2022. Last year, Witkoff brought Marc Fogel, a teacher serving 14 years for carrying medically prescribed marijuana, back from Moscow after he was released in exchange for Alexander Vinnik, a Russian jailed in the U.S. for cybercrime.