President Trump secured the release of U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard from a Russian prison after more than four years, with no prisoner swap, and after critics pushed for sanctions that Trump says would have killed the deal.
Stephen Hubbard is free. The 74-year-old Michigan native and retired school teacher, held in Russia for more than four years on charges tied to the war in Ukraine, was released from custody after President Trump pressed Vladimir Putin directly and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff sealed the handoff in St. Petersburg.
CBS News reported that the release was announced during Witkoff’s meeting with Putin at the Constantine Palace, that Trump confirmed it Wednesday, and that Hubbard was expected to be flown to Texas for treatment at a military hospital after years of poor health behind bars.
Trump said Russia freed Hubbard at his request, with nothing traded in return. That claim sits at the center of the story, and of the fight over sanctions that preceded it.
In an early Wednesday post on Truth Social, Trump stated that Hubbard “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 went further. Russia released Hubbard “out of respect for President Trump,” Trump wrote, and the United States “was not required to give anything in return, an unprecedented situation for Russia. There was no ‘swap’ necessary for this release.”
“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.”
That framing matters. Past high-profile releases from Russian custody, including journalist Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan in 2024, came through complicated multi-country prisoner swaps. Trump cast Hubbard’s exit as different: a direct ask, answered without a trade.
Witkoff carried the same message into the room with Putin. In video from the meeting, the U.S. special envoy thanked the Russian leader for sending Hubbard home.
“I wanted to thank you very much. The president sends his thanks. Our whole nation sends it’s thanks,” Witkoff told Putin. “Because of you, he’s going home to his family.”
The New York Post reported the same exchange and filled in Hubbard’s path to that plane: a retired teacher who served in the U.S. Air Force and National Guard; captured in April 2022 from his home in Izyum, Ukraine; sentenced in a closed October 2024 trial to six years and 10 months; held in facilities including Mordovia; designated wrongfully detained by the State Department in January 2025; and now the last American the department had formally labeled as wrongfully detained in Russia to be freed.
Russian state news agencies, citing Putin, said Hubbard was at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. Trump and Witkoff shared a photo of Hubbard on a plane with U.S. officials after the release.
Five days before the release news, the Trump administration announced it was waiving some sanctions on Russia. The decision drew harsh criticism in Congress, including from some Republicans. Putin praised the move. Trump tied the two tracks together without apology.
On the White House South Lawn Wednesday afternoon, Trump told reporters the United States was “in the midst of negotiating” when outsiders demanded the sanctions hit as planned.
“And a lot of stupid people said, and people that don’t know how life works, they said, ‘Why aren’t you putting Russia sanctions and all this’ in the midst of a negotiation to try to get a long-term hostage back from Russia. If I would have done that, you would not have Mr. Hubbard coming back.”
In a later Truth Social post, Trump said “numerous people” who had called for the sanctions to take effect had “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. If sanctions would have been placed, certainly those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt.”
The sequence is plain on the public record. Trump said he asked Putin by phone last week. The White House stopped new sanctions from taking effect. Witkoff met Putin in St. Petersburg in talks focused on the Ukraine war. Hubbard walked free. Trump said the release would not have happened if the sanctions had landed first.
Breitbart reported that Russia relented after Trump pressure, that Witkoff announced the freeing after the Putin meeting, and that Hubbard was taken to Pulkovo Airport for repatriation while in poor health and bound for Texas treatment, the same core facts, with Trump’s personal intervention front and center.
Trump had previewed the ask. “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. Let’s see what happens,” he told reporters in earlier comments carried in the supporting coverage.
Hubbard’s case was never a routine criminal file in American eyes. The State Department formally declared him wrongfully detained, the last American with that formal status still held in Russia before this release. His family maintained his innocence throughout.
Russian authorities accused him of manning a checkpoint for mercenaries and of fighting for Ukraine. They sentenced him in 2024 to almost seven years in a penal colony. Hubbard was a 74-year-old retired teacher and military veteran, not a celebrity journalist or a headline spy case. He still spent more than four years in Russian custody after capture in Ukraine shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
That invasion is nearly five years old. Americans keep getting caught in its shadow. Robert Gilman, a former Marine, was freed in August after more than four years imprisoned and a health collapse to life-threatening condition; Putin granted a humanitarian pardon after a direct Trump appeal. Marc Fogel, another American school teacher, was released early last year. Gershkovich and Whelan came home in the 2024 swap. Hubbard’s exit, Trump insists, required no swap at all.
Witkoff went further in the St. Petersburg meeting, telling Putin: “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian, you are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that.” The praise was deliberate diplomacy in the middle of Ukraine war talks. The result for Hubbard was a flight home.
As many as 10 other Americans, including dual nationals, remain in Russian custody. The State Department still carries a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Russia, warning of wrongful detention, arbitrary enforcement, and limited consular help.
Last year the Trump administration created a “state sponsors of wrongful detention” designation with authority for expanded sanctions, export controls, and travel restrictions. It applied that label to Iran in February and Afghanistan in March. It has not applied it to Russia. Separately, American Aleksandr Antonov, not declared wrongfully detained by the U.S. government, was arrested in Russia last year and sentenced to six years; his family says he was targeted because he is a U.S. citizen and has urged the State Department to prioritize his case, a fight that produced internal department debate earlier this year.
Hubbard’s release does not empty those cells. It does show a president willing to pair a direct ask with a sanctions pause and then own the trade-off in public. Critics in Congress wanted the sanctions on schedule. Trump said the hostage came first, and that the critics who did not know about the negotiation later apologized.
Hubbard is expected at a military hospital in Texas. He leaves Russia in poor health after more than four years locked up on charges his family rejected and the U.S. government branded wrongful. The photo from the plane shows an American headed home with U.S. officials beside him.
When an American comes home without a swap, and the president who asked for him says sanctions pressure would have stopped the deal cold, voters can judge the results, not the cable-news theory of toughness.
