Netherlands – The Moscow Times, October 17, 2024
When Ukrainian soldier Ihor Shyshko described his two years of detention in Russia alongside 72-year-old U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard, three words came to mind: torture, humiliation and hunger.
After being held incommunicado for two and a half years, Hubbard suddenly appeared in a Moscow court last month where he was sentenced in a closed trial to nearly seven years behind bars for allegedly fighting for Ukraine.
He was captured in April 2022, just weeks after Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Washington says it has only “limited” information about his case since Russian authorities refused to share any details.
On Sept. 27, just 10 days before the verdict was handed down, Russia announced for the first time that it had been holding Hubbard, who appeared pale and frail in the court.
Shyshko, meanwhile, was taken prisoner in May 2022 and released in an exchange earlier this year. AFP first met him while he was undergoing psychological treatment in Ukraine in August, before Moscow revealed that Hubbard was in their custody.
In separate interviews with AFP in September and October, Shyshko recounted his detention alongside Hubbard in two Russian prisons.
The two men were held in Novozybkov in the Bryansk region in western Russia from September 2022 to May 2023, sometimes in neighboring cells. They were then held in the Pakino penal colony no. 7 in the Vladimir region, some 270 kilometers (168 miles) east of Moscow, where they were cellmates for a time.
The presence of a foreigner among Ukrainian prisoners of war was unusual, Shyshko told AFP.
“It wasn’t very clear why he was there,” said Shyshko, a 41-year-old with dark circles under his eyes and sunken cheeks who says he spent 801 days in total in captivity.
Shyshko said Hubbard was subjected to the same treatment as the Ukrainians: beaten, humiliated and starved by their guards, adding that he personally witnessed abuse against Hubbard and endured the same himself.
