free Hubbard<\/a> and that, unlike previous releases, the U.S. did not have to give up anyone in return.<\/p>\nWatch Steven Hubbard land in San Antonio:<\/p>\n
Hubbard, who before his arrest had lived in Ukraine for years, was sentenced in 2024 to nearly seven years in prison during closed court proceedings. Prosecutors said he had signed a contract with the Ukrainian military after Russia\u2019s invasion in 2022, and that he fought alongside Kyiv\u2019s forces until being captured two months later.<\/p>\n
The U.S. government under President Joe Biden\u2019s administration designated Hubbard as wrongfully detained. His family also disputed the Russian allegations.<\/p>\n
Video from the time of his capture showed Hubbard with his hands zip-tied. He was later imprisoned in Russia, spending time in a penal colony and a prisoner-of-war camp, according to his attorney.<\/p>\n
After his release, Hubbard thanked Trump\u2019s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in St. Petersburg and also spoke with the president by phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you very much for all your efforts,\u201d Hubbard said.<\/p>\n
Trump told reporters Wednesday night that Hubbard is expected to visit the White House some time in the coming days.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press and ABC News contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Read also:<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 After more than four years in Russian custody, 74-year-old American Stephen Hubbard has returned to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[145,41742,35711,82,84,83,160308],"class_list":["post-473244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-donald-trump","tag-joint-base-san-antonio","tag-russia","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-stephen-hubbard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}