Trump Asked Putin to Free Stephen Hubbard. Russia Sent the 74-Year-Old Teacher Home Without a Swap.

Stephen Hubbard is a 74-year-old retired schoolteacher from Michigan. Russian troops seized him in eastern Ukraine in April 2022, and a Moscow court sentenced him to nearly seven years in a penal colony. On Wednesday, Russia let him go, and the United States handed over nothing in return.

President Vladimir Putin announced the release himself, at the start of a meeting in St. Petersburg with President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff. "He is at Pulkovo Airport," Putin told Witkoff in front of the cameras, Axios reported. Hubbard was the last American in Russia whom the State Department had formally declared wrongfully detained, CBS News reported.

Trump said it happened because he asked. "Stephen Hubbard, taken four years ago by Russia during the Biden Administration, was just released from prison, at the request of President Donald J. Trump, made directly to President Vladimir Putin in a telephone conversation last week," he wrote on Truth Social. "The United States, out of respect for President Trump, was not required to give anything in return - an unprecedented situation for Russia. There was no 'swap' necessary for this release."

Who Stephen Hubbard is

Hubbard grew up in Michigan, served in the U.S. Air Force and National Guard, and spent decades teaching English abroad, including in Japan and Cyprus, the New York Post and NBC News reported. In 2014 he settled in Izyum, a small city in eastern Ukraine, where he lived with a Ukrainian partner and taught English online.

When Russia invaded in February 2022, Izyum fell within weeks. Hubbard later told his lawyer that Russian soldiers grabbed him from his house without warning. He was moved through at least five Russian detention centers, and Russia refused to let U.S. officials see him, the Post reported.

Russian prosecutors claimed he had joined a Ukrainian defense unit that promised him $1,000 a month. A closed trial at the Moscow City Court ended on Oct. 7, 2024, with a sentence of six years and 10 months, TASS reported. Russian state media said he pleaded guilty. His lawyer, Martin De Luca, has said the charges were false and that Hubbard was never in any combat or military unit. "He is so non-military," his sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, told Reuters in 2024, as The Guardian reported. "He never had a gun, owned a gun, done any of that … He's more of a pacifist."

The State Department designated him wrongfully detained in January 2025. His legal team didn't learn until that April that he was being held in Russia's Mordovia region, east of Moscow, the Post reported.

"Just remember that question"

Trump hinted at the deal a day early. Asked in the Oval Office on Tuesday whether a deal to free Hubbard was close, he told the reporter to hold on to the question:

"I've been talking to President Putin about Mr. Hubbard. I've been talking to him at length. I've asked him to release him," Trump said, Fox News reported. "Let's see what happens."

Less than a day later, Witkoff sat down with Putin at the Constantine Palace. "The president sends his thanks," Witkoff told him. "Because of you, he's going home to his family," CBS News reported. Witkoff then met Hubbard at the airport. Video from Russian state news agency RIA showed Hubbard in a green jacket, smiling and shaking the envoy's hand. "Thank you very much for all your efforts," Hubbard told him, NBC News reported. Witkoff told him, "from today, it's a new life."

No trade this time

For years, getting an American out of a Russian prison worked like a pawnshop. Moscow held the ticket, and Washington paid to redeem it. Trevor Reed came home in 2022 in exchange for a Russian drug-smuggling pilot. Later that year, Brittney Griner cost Viktor Bout, the arms dealer known as the "Merchant of Death." Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan came home in 2024 in a 24-prisoner deal that sent eight Russians back, including hitman Vadim Krasikov, Reuters reported. Even the 2025 releases of teacher Marc Fogel and ballerina Ksenia Karelina each came with a Russian freed in return.

Hubbard follows former Marine Robert Gilman, whom Russia released in August on humanitarian grounds after Trump appealed directly to Putin, CBS News reported. At the time, the State Department said Gilman joined "over 100 Americans whom President Trump has freed during his second term in office."

Trump also tied the release to his decision last week to pause new sanctions on Russia, a move unga.news covered here. "Numerous people, who requested that sanctions be immediately imposed on Russia, have called to apologize to President Trump in that they didn't know that he was negotiating the release of Stephen Hubbard, a truly big and important deal for the U.S.," he wrote in a second post. "If sanctions would have been placed, certainly those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt." In a third, he added: "What a difference a President makes!"

What his family said

Hubbard's family thanked "President Trump and his team for opening the dialog with Russia which led to this joyful day," NBC News reported. "Our family can attest that there are wonderful blessings to be found along the hard road to peace."

His son, the Rev. Joseph Coleman, an Orthodox priest, said the family never stopped praying. "Never once did we waver as we prayed for success in these negotiations," he said, according to CNN. De Luca's firm asked for privacy "as Stephen recovers and reconnects with the people who love him," NBC News reported.

What happens next

Hubbard, who is in poor health, is expected to be flown to Texas for treatment at a military hospital, CBS News reported. As many as 10 other Americans, including dual nationals, remain in Russian custody.

The meeting itself was about ending the war in Ukraine. Witkoff came to St. Petersburg straight from talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders in Oslo on Tuesday. He handed Putin documents laying out an updated peace proposal and asked him to restart three-way talks among the U.S., Russia and Ukraine, starting with technical teams, Axios and Interfax-Ukraine reported. Jared Kushner joined by phone. The talks ran about three hours and also covered a possible Trump-Putin meeting in China and economic ties, TASS reported.

Whether Putin agrees to new talks is the next test. On Trump's other request, he already said yes: a retired teacher who spent four and a half years in Russian custody is going home, and not a single prisoner was traded for him.