Trump envoy thanks Putin for humanitarian gesture
US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for releasing US Air Force veteran Stephen Hubbard, who had been convicted in Russia on charges of fighting for Ukraine.
Witkoff thanked Putin on Wednesday during talks with the Russian leader at Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg. He expressed gratitude on behalf of Trump and the American people for freeing Hubbard, adding that he had met Hubbard’s son, a priest at a Greek Orthodox church, several days earlier and discussed his father’s detention.
Putin responded that Hubbard was already at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport, preparing to leave the country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later noted that the decision to release Hubbard was made on “humanitarian grounds,” adding that Moscow and Washington maintain contacts on prisoner swaps.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump confirmed the release, stressing that the US “was not required to give anything in return,” which he described as “an unprecedented situation for Russia.”
“This major return should have taken place long ago through the Biden Administration, which got nowhere in its negotiations with the Kremlin,” he added.
Hubbard, 74, is a retired Michigan schoolteacher and US Air Force veteran. He was detained by Russian forces in the Ukrainian city of Izyum in April 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its military operation. Hubbard had been living in Ukraine with his Ukrainian partner since 2014, the year hostilities in Donbass erupted following a Western-backed coup in Kiev.
In 2024, a Russian court sentenced him to six years and ten months in prison on mercenary charges over joining a Ukrainian territorial defense unit and fighting for Kiev in exchange for $1,000 a month.
Hubbard’s sister claimed that he held pro-Russian views, was a non-military pacifist, and was highly unlikely to take up arms.
On Tuesday, Trump said he had personally asked Putin to release Hubbard. “I don’t want to talk about it, but everybody has been after Hubbard for a long time, long before I got here… Watch what happens. We have been focused on Hubbard,” he told reporters at the time.
Hubbard’s release follows the unilateral decision by Moscow in August to free former US Marine Robert Gilman, who was detained in early 2022 after drunkenly assaulting a police officer while traveling through Russia by train. At the time, Trump said Putin pardoned Gilman on humanitarian grounds, adding that no prisoner exchange was involved.
In April 2025, Moscow and Washington carried out a prisoner swap, with Russia releasing Ksenia Karelina, a US-Russian dual national jailed over donations to a charity that supports the Ukrainian military, while Washington freed Arthur Petrov, a German-Russian citizen arrested for allegedly exporting sensitive microelectronics.
