American teacher’s sister pleads for his release from Russian captivity

(NEW YORK) -- The last time Stephen J. Hubbard was seen in public, he was being led handcuffed into a Moscow courtroom.

The 73-year-old American has spent roughly three years in Russian captivity. In early 2022, he was swept up by the Kremlin's troops as they occupied parts of Ukraine following Russia's full-scale invasion. He is believed to be the only American Russia has taken from Ukraine and put on trial.

Russia has convicted Hubbard as a mercenary fighting for Ukraine. But his family, the U.S. government and Ukrainian officials say the reality is that the elderly American was an innocent teacher.

"We didn't even know if he was dead or alive until July," Hubbard's sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, told ABC News. "It's dire. His health is dire. It's been reported he's passing blood. They need to bring him home."

Hubbard is one of a string of Americans seized by Russia on dubious charges in recent years, as the Kremlin has seized hostages to use as political bargaining chips, among them WNBA star Brittney Griner and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. The State Department has designated Hubbard as "wrongfully detained" meaning the U.S. government can negotiate for his release.

In September, Russian state media reported Hubbard pleaded guilty to the mercenary charges. His sister said the allegations were absurd and that he had been forced into the guilty plea after years of torture and mistreatment.

"It's just a lie," Patricia said. "Steve was 70 years old, there's no way he was a mercenary. Steve was an English teacher. It's an excuse to kidnap Americans. Steve is nothing but a pawn for Russia."

The State Department called on Russia to release Hubbard.

"He never should have been taken captive," the State Department said in a statement. "The United States will continue to work for the release of Mr. Hubbard and all other Americans unjustly detained in Russia."

Born in Big Rapids, Michigan, Hubbard briefly joined the Air Force after high school but left after three years. In the 1980s, he moved to Japan with his second wife, where he spent the next 25 years working as an English teacher, according to his sister. After the couple divorced, he and his son from that marriage moved to Cyprus, where he met a Ukrainian woman.

In 2014, he and the woman moved to Ukraine, settling in Izyum, a small, sleepy city in the country's east. Hubbard, who doesn't speak Russian or Ukrainian, continued to teach English online to support himself, his sister said.

Hubbard was in Izyum when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russian troops quickly overran the city and conducted one of the most brutal occupations of the war over the seven months that followed.

After Ukrainian forces liberated Izyum in September 2022, they discovered evidence of Russian atrocities -- including hundreds of mass graves in a nearby forest. Soldiers had dumped bodies, with many showing signs of torture.

Hubbard was among the hundreds of civilians detained in Izyum and the surrounding villages during the Russian occupation. Ukrainian police investigating war crimes said they have been able to establish that a group of Russian soldiers seized Hubbard from his home in April 2022.

He was brought to a torture chamber in the nearby village of Balaklia, where many of those detained passed through, prosecutors in the Kharkiv region told ABC News.

A month later, Russian television aired a report featuring Hubbard from a prison in occupied Ukraine. Another video published by Mash, a channel with links to Russia's security services, shows a zip-tied Hubbard being beaten in the back of a Russian APC.

Ukrainian prisoners of war have said they crossed paths with Hubbard at different times during his imprisonment. Ihor Shyshko told ABC News he shared a cell with Hubbard for about a month in 2023 at a prison in Pakino, around 150 miles from Moscow.

"The day began and ended with tortures," Shyshko said.

In addition to subjecting them to electric shocks for interrogations, guards would force prisoners to stand in uncomfortable positions and then hit them in the genitals or knock them to the ground, according to Shyshko.

The prisons were freezing, Shyshko said, and prisoners were kept on a starvation diet, fed mostly water with a few spoons of buckwheat in it. Many Ukrainian prisoners of war return from captivity looking skeletal and suffering serious health problems.

Shyshko was released in a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine last year. Photos show him gaunt and wasted after his release, with bruises and rashes from scabies on his legs. He still wears hearing aids on both ears because of damage from beatings, he said.

The conditions were even harder for an elderly man like Hubbard, whom inmates believed was subjected to harsher treatment because he was American, Shyshko said. He recalled other inmates having to carry Hubbard to a medical center because he was unable to walk properly.

"He had very damaged knees, there was practically no skin, everything was rotten," he said. "He is an old man. And he could not understand why this was happening to him."

Patricia said she learned which prison her brother had been in after the wife of a Ukrainian soldier tracked her down. After Shyshko's release, he also made contact with U.S. government representatives in an effort to help Hubbard.

Ukrainian police and prosecutors have opened a war crimes case over Hubbard's abduction. After months interviewing witnesses and checking with government organizations, they said they had no evidence he had any involvement with Ukraine's military or any fighting. Ukrainian officials and soldiers also noted Hubbard's health and age likely meant he would not have been chosen to fight.

"He had nothing to do with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He did not participate in the territorial defense. He is simply a civilian teacher," Oleksandr Kobyliev, who heads the war crimes department of the Kharkiv regional police, told ABC News.

Patricia hopes her brother can be released in a prisoner exchange similar to those that have freed other U.S. citizens.

Last July, Russia released Americans, including Gershkovich, in the largest exchange since the end of the Cold War after reaching an agreement with the Biden administration. In February, American teacher Marc Fogel was freed in exchange for a Russian cyber criminal, in a swap agreed with the Trump administration.

Patricia said she is selling her house in order to buy another place with room for Hubbard to stay and recover when he is eventually freed. She pleaded for President Donald Trump to help save her brother.

"You went and got another schoolteacher, go get my brother," she said. "Before it's too late."

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