Russia Sentences American Citizen to Prison for Fighting for Ukraine

A court in Russia on Monday, October 8, sentenced a 72-year-old American citizen to six years and ten months in prison following a closed trial on charges of fighting for Ukraine. Russian investigators have accused Steven James Hubbard, an American from Michigan, of receiving a monthly salary of $1,000 since 2014 for working in a Ukrainian territorial defense unit, and of receiving military training and ammunition after enlisting in the Ukrainian army in January 2023. Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine a month later, in February 2023. According to the state news agency RIA, Russian soldiers arrested Hubbard in April 2023. While Russian state media claimed that Hubbard confessed to his charges, Patricia Hubbard Fox, Steven Hubbard's sister, and another relative have expressed doubts about the validity of this claim and his confessions. They told Reuters that he held pro-Russian views and, given his age, it was unlikely he would have taken up arms. On Monday, Hubbard sat in a glass cage in court, handcuffed and with a shaved head, listening emotionlessly as the judge announced his sentence. Although RIA reported that Hubbard's lawyer said he would appeal the sentence, Reuters stated it could not confirm the circumstances of Hubbard's arrest. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters, and a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, while confirming the arrest of an American citizen, declined to provide further details. Hubbard's relatives described him as a reclusive individual who had distanced himself from his family during decades of studying abroad, including in Japan and Cyprus. According to his sister, he moved to Ukraine in 2014 and lived with a Ukrainian woman for a time, but never learned Russian or Ukrainian and had little contact with local people. Hubbard is one of at least 10 Americans currently imprisoned in Russia. Another American citizen, Robert Gilman, a former U.S. Marine, was also sentenced on the same day in a separate court in Voronezh, south of Moscow, to an additional seven years and one month in prison for assaulting a prison officer and a state investigator while serving his sentence.