US ‘mercenary’ sentenced in Moscow court

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A Moscow court has sentenced a 72-year-old US citizen to six years and 10 months in prison for allegedly fighting in a Ukrainian unit against Russia’s invading army.

Stephen Hubbard, from the small town of Big Rapids, Michigan, is the first US citizen to be jailed in Russia on “mercenary” charges since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

Russian state media published footage of Hubbard, who appeared to have difficulty standing, listening in a glass cage as a judge read out his sentence.

The conviction, following a brief closed-door trial in Moscow city court, makes Hubbard one of about a dozen Americans currently being held in Russia on various charges.

Russia arrested several US citizens in the period leading up to and immediately following the invasion in what was widely seen as a hostage-taking strategy aimed at securing the release of the Kremlin’s operatives from prison in the west.

In August, Russia released 16 prisoners, including the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, in a complex swap with the US and four European countries for eight Russians held in the west.

The exchange was the largest of its kind since the cold war but only included Gershkovich and two other US citizens, the journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and Paul Whelan, a former Marine.

In return, the Russians obtained the release of Vadim Krasikov, a hitman convicted of a murder in Berlin, and, in a previous exchange, the freeing of Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death”.

Though prosecutors said Hubbard was arrested after Russia captured the city of Izyum in eastern Ukraine in April 2022, his case only came to public attention last week when he pleaded guilty to charges of serving in a mercenary unit.

Prosecutors claimed Hubbard had lived in Ukraine since 2014 and signed a contract with a territorial defence unit in Izyum in the early weeks of the war, state newswire Tass reported.

According to the indictment, Hubbard was to receive at least $1,000 a month, trained to use a weapon and fought for Ukrainian forces until he was detained by Russian troops.

Hubbard plans to appeal his conviction, Tass said, citing a member of his defence team.

The circumstances of Hubbard’s capture and prosecution remain largely unclear.

His sister, Patricia Fox, told Reuters last week that he had never owned a gun and was living alone in Ukraine before the war after splitting with a girlfriend there.

Ukraine has not commented on Hubbard’s arrest. The US embassy in Moscow did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Separately on Monday, a court in the southern Russian city of Voronezh sentenced another US citizen, Robert Gilman, to seven years and one month in prison on charges of assaulting an investigator and prison official while being held on other charges.

Gilman, who had already been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for assaulting a police officer, told state newswire RIA Novosti last week he wanted to be exchanged in a prisoner swap.