Trump Persuades Putin To Free Jailed American Teacher Who Was Taken On Biden’s Watch

President Donald Trump personally persuaded Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to free a 74-year-old retired American schoolteacher who spent more than four years locked up in Russia on mercenary charges.

Stephen Hubbard walked out of Russian custody Wednesday and was waiting at a St. Petersburg airport for his flight back to the States, according to U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in the city for talks with Putin.

Hubbard was the last American officially deemed wrongfully detained by Russia. He is the third American prisoner released by Russia during Trump’s second term after the president also negotiated the releases of former Marine Robert Gilman in August and teacher Marc Fogel last year.

Trump stated that he had made the request to Putin during a phone call last week. The president insisted Washington handed over nothing in exchange, calling it “an unprecedented situation for Russia” and stressing that no prisoner swap was needed.

He also took a swipe at former President Joe Biden, noting that Hubbard was snatched on Biden’s watch and that the previous administration’s talks with the Kremlin went nowhere.

“Welcome home Stephen, it’s great to have you back,” Trump added.

Just a day earlier, Trump had mentioned the deal to reporters at the White House, saying he’d been talking with Putin “at length” about the case.

The Michigan native, who is in poor health, will be flown to Texas for treatment at a military hospital, CBS News reported.

Hubbard’s ordeal began in April 2022, just over a month after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. Russian troops seized him from his home in Izyum, the eastern Ukrainian city they captured that spring and held for roughly six months before Ukrainian forces pushed them out in September 2022. By then, Hubbard was already gone.

Moscow accused Hubbard of joining a Ukrainian territorial defense unit, claiming he got training, guns, and ammunition and was promised $1,000 a month. Russian state media alleged he’d been caught staffing a Ukrainian checkpoint and later claimed he pleaded guilty.

His family staunchly disagreed. His sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, said her brother actually leaned pro-Russian and was far too old to pick up a weapon. She described him as a near-pacifist who had never owned a gun.

His American lawyer, Martin De Luca, said Hubbard told him the charges were false, that he never served in any combat unit, and that Russian soldiers simply dragged him out of his house.

Disturbing videos surfaced online, including one Fox said showed her brother being interrogated about his views on Putin and the war and another appearing to show a bound man being hit with a sandal.

After a closed-door trial, a Moscow court convicted Hubbard in October 2024 and handed him a sentence of six years and 10 months. His legal team didn’t learn until April 2025 that he was being held in Mordovia, a region east of Moscow notorious for its prison camps. Russia repeatedly refused U.S. diplomats access to him.

The State Department formally labeled him wrongfully detained in January 2025, clearing the way for negotiations.

Hubbard, who served in the Air Force and National Guard, grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan. He earned a master’s in English, taught in Japan for a quarter-century, lived in Cyprus, and settled in Izyum in 2014 with a Ukrainian partner, getting by on a pension of roughly $300 a month.