A release he doubted until the last moment
Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired teacher from Michigan, has given his first account of leaving a Russian prison, saying he had been told many times before that freedom was coming and had stopped putting faith in such assurances. He described holding to the view that proof comes from what is seen and done rather than from what is promised.[S1]
According to Hubbard, certainty arrived only when prison staff handed him new clothing and walked him toward the exit. Once outside, he saw a vehicle and two Russians accompanying him, and it was during the drive from Moscow to St Petersburg that he concluded he was genuinely being taken somewhere, he said in his first public remarks since his release on 21 October.[S1]
Charges Moscow pressed and a defense that denies them
Hubbard spent more than four years in Russian custody on accusations that he had served as a mercenary fighting in Ukraine, a country Russia invaded in February 2022. His legal representatives have rejected those allegations and maintained that he took no part in any military activity.[S1]
An Oval Office meeting and the politics around it
Hubbard's release was marked at the White House, where Donald Trump received him in the Oval Office. The US president said he had personally asked Vladimir Putin, Russia's leader, to let Hubbard go, and that Washington had not been required to hand over anyone in exchange. Trump described Hubbard as a man he had wanted to bring home.[S1][S3]
Access to the meeting was tightly controlled: the White House admitted only a small group of journalists, made up mainly of news photographers and a television crew. In the wider international community, the release was widely seen as Russia's newest move to nudge Trump toward Putin's stance on the war in Ukraine, while also giving the US president a diplomatic achievement shortly before the 3 November midterm elections, in which his Republican party is forecast to lose congressional seats.[S1]
