Russia releases US prisoner Stephen Hubbard during Witkoff visit

Editor's note: this article was updated to include comments from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Russia released U.S. political prisoner Stephen Hubbard on Oct. 21, after a visit by Washington's special envoy Steve Witkoff that took place on the same day, reports Russian state media Vesti.

Hubbard, aged 74, was sentenced two years ago by a Moscow court for allegedly serving in the Ukrainian military, in spite of his old age.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced the release of Hubbard during his meeting with Witkoff, adding that Hubbard had already been taken to the airport, Vesti reports.

U.S. President Donald Trump later confirmed Hubbard's release in a social media post, in which he said he asked Putin to release Hubbard in a telephone call the previous week.

Moscow's imprisonment of Westerners for later use as political bargaining chips is a widely known and often deployed tactic.

Dmitri Medvedev, Russia's ex-president, even alluded to the policy in a Telegram post on Oct. 9, in which he said, "it is quite likely that we will have to replenish the exchange fund with European and American idiots in order to get our own people out," after Montenegro arrested the founder of the Russian war blog Rybar.

Montenegro later expelled Rybar's Mikhail Zvinchuk to Russia.

Hubbard had reportedly been living in Ukraine since 2014. After Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, he allegedly joined a Ukrainian territorial defense unit in the town of Izium in Kharkiv Oblast, and a couple of months later was captured by Russia.

A Russian court in 2024 sentenced him to prison on charges of fighting as a mercenary — a term Moscow uses to label foreign volunteers fighting for Ukraine — with Hubbard reportedly pleading guilty to the charges.

However, his sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, and another relative questioned Hubbard's confession in an interview with Reuters in September 2024, saying that he held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to take up arms at his age.

The U.S. State Department has designated Hubbard as wrongfully detained.

Trump wrote that the U.S. "was not required to give anything in return (for Hubbard's release) — an unprecedented situation in Russia."

However, Trump waived Russia sanctions in that same week, and agreed to buy diesel from Moscow the week before.

Witkoff is otherwise in St. Petersburg to try and spark a fresh round of peace talks, with hopes that Witkoff could get agreement for a trilateral talk between President Volodymyr Zelensky, Putin, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

However, Putin has long evaded a meeting with Zelensky. Instead, the Kremlin chief reportedly pushes to meet Trump in China next month to secure a favorable peace deal, without Ukraine at the table.

And Russian state media has made no mention of Putin committing to any trilateral talks.