Washington D.C. – ABC News, April 05, 2025
Stephen Hubbard was captured by Russian troops in Ukraine in 2022.
The last time Stephen J. Hubbard was seen in public, he was being led handcuffed into a Moscow courtroom.
The 73-year-old American has spent roughly three years in Russian captivity. In early 2022, he was swept up by the Kremlin’s troops as they occupied parts of Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion. He is believed to be the only American Russia has taken from Ukraine and put on trial.
Russia has convicted Hubbard as a mercenary fighting for Ukraine. But his family, the U.S. government and Ukrainian officials say the reality is that the elderly American was an innocent teacher.
At the court hearing in Moscow last October, a masked guard placed Hubbard into a glass cage. He struggled to get to his feet as the judge read out his sentence in Russian: almost seven years in a prison camp.
