72-year-old American citizen Stephen James Hubbard has been sentenced to six years and 10 months in a Russian prison after being convicted of serving as a mercenary for Ukraine. Hubbard was accused of receiving payment to serve in a Ukrainian territorial defense unit in the city of Izyum, where he had been living since 2014. He was provided with training, weapons, and ammunition when he allegedly signed up in February 2022, around the same time that Russian troops entered Ukraine. Despite Russian state media reporting that Hubbard pleaded guilty to the charge, his family members cast doubt on this confession, stating that he held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to have taken up arms at his age.
Hubbard appeared in court wearing a beige sweater, sitting in a glass courtroom cage in handcuffs. The judge pronounced him guilty, and his lawyer indicated that they would appeal the verdict. Interviews with family members revealed that Hubbard had lived in Ukraine since 2014 and had few local connections, surviving on a small pension. The exact circumstances of Hubbard’s detention remain unconfirmed, and the U.S. embassy in Moscow declined to comment further on the case.
In a separate case, U.S. citizen and ex-marine Robert Gilman was sentenced to seven years and one month in prison in Voronezh, south of Moscow, for assaulting a prison official and a state investigator while serving time for a previous assault conviction. Hubbard is one of at least 10 Americans currently imprisoned in Russia, following a prisoner swap in August that freed three Americans and others.
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