Follow-up: Putin Announces Release of U.S. Teacher Stephen Hubbard, Held in Russia for More Than Four Years, During Talks With Envoy Witkoff

ST. PETERSBURG — Russian President Vladimir Putin announced during talks with U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg on Wednesday that Russia has agreed to release Stephen Hubbard, an American citizen detained for more than four years, and that Hubbard has been taken to St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport, the BBC and CNN reported, citing Russian state media. According to TASS, the announcement of Hubbard's release was the first outcome made public from Wednesday's talks.

Witkoff arrived in St. Petersburg on Wednesday morning and met Putin at the Constantine Palace, with Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev among those attending; President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner joined remotely because he has the flu, CNN reported. Putin thanked Trump for his efforts to settle the war in Ukraine and said Russia was interested in restoring economic ties with the United States, Reuters reported, while Witkoff said there was a basis for a ceasefire and that he hoped Putin would consider resuming three-way talks between Russia, the United States and Ukraine. A day earlier, Witkoff met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Oslo, Norway, where a U.S. official said the two sides were in strong alignment on the next steps of a peace framework.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that he had spoken with Putin about Hubbard's case at length, said it was time to bring Hubbard home, and hinted that a development could come soon. A U.S. official had said before the trip that Witkoff's visit was expected to include efforts to seek the release of Hubbard, whom the U.S. Department of State has designated as wrongfully detained.

Hubbard, 74, is a retired teacher who grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan, served in the U.S. Air Force and the National Guard, and earned a master's degree in English. He taught English in Japan for 25 years before moving to Cyprus and then, in 2014, to the eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum with a Ukrainian partner. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and captured Izyum two months later; Hubbard was detained in April 2022. Following a closed trial, a Moscow court convicted him of being a mercenary in October 2024 and sentenced him to six years and 10 months in prison. 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.

His sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, questioned the reported confession, saying Hubbard held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to have taken up arms in his seventies. His U.S.-based lawyer, Martin De Luca, told Reuters in June 2025 that Hubbard had said the charges were false, that he was not in any combat or military unit, and that Russian soldiers had simply grabbed him from his house.

In January 2025, Washington designated Hubbard as wrongfully detained, enabling the U.S. government to pursue negotiations for his release; the State Department has said Russia refused to grant U.S. officials consular access to him. The New York Times reported that Hubbard had been moved through at least five Russian detention centres before his trial, and his legal team learned only in April 2025 that he was being held in a facility in the Mordovia region, east of Moscow. He lived on a pension of about $300 a month, and he and his sister last spoke in September 2021.

As of publication, neither the State Department nor the White House had issued a formal statement on Hubbard's release, and the timing of his departure from Russia and return to the United States was not yet clear.

Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)

Photo: 俄罗斯总统普京与美国总统特使 Steve Witkoff 握手（资料图，2026年1月22日摄；Hubbard 本人暂无开放授权照片，本图为本次会谈双方当事人此前会面场景）。俄罗斯总统府官网（kremlin.ru）照片，CC BY 4.0，经维基共享资源。File photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, January 22, 2026. Photo by kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. No openly licensed photo of Stephen Hubbard was available.

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