An American teacher held by Russia for four years is coming home after President Trump's direct negotiations with Vladimir Putin delivered what years of establishment diplomacy could not.
Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old Michigan native, was living in eastern Ukraine when Russian forces overran the area in 2022 and took him into custody. He is the only American in Russian custody the State Department classifies as wrongfully detained. A Russian court sentenced him in 2024 to nearly seven years in prison on mercenary charges — accusations his family rejected, citing his longtime pacifist views. Russian state media claimed he pleaded guilty. His family questioned that too.
The Guardian reports Russia released Hubbard amid Wednesday's visit to St. Petersburg by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who was scheduled to meet with Putin. The Washington Post, filing a day earlier before the release, reported that Trump had confirmed Hubbard's identity for the first time and was actively pressing Putin for his freedom.
"I've been talking to President Putin about Mr. Hubbard. I've been talking to him at length," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, per the Post. "I've asked him to release him. We'll see what happens. Let's see what happens. I'd love to get him back. It's time. It's time. It's time to have Mr. Hubbard back."
Trump also made clear this didn't start on his watch but insisted it would end there: "Everybody's been after Hubbard for a long time, long before I got here. And just remember that question for a couple of days from now, okay?"
That framing — "long before I got here" — is the point. The State Department's wrongfully detained designation sat there for years while the professional diplomatic class produced nothing. Hubbard sat in Russian custody through the entire Biden term. Now Trump picks up the phone, puts Witkoff on a plane, and the American walks.
The Post noted the Hubbard effort runs alongside Trump's broader push to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make a deal with Putin — a move the Ukrainians call defeat and Trump calls ending a war that isn't serving American interests. The two tracks aren't unrelated. Leverage is leverage, and Trump appears to be using it.
The establishment foreign policy crowd spent years issuing statements of concern. Trump cut a deal. The question now isn't whether deals work — it's what they cost, and whether the permanent bureaucracy will ever admit that their process was the problem all along.
