An American man has been sentenced to six years and 10 months in a Russian prison for allegedly fighting as a paid mercenary for Ukraine.
Stephen Hubbard, a 72-year-old originally from Big Rapids, Mich., appeared in a Moscow courtroom Monday in handcuffs wearing a beige sweater and black toque, later removing the hat to reveal a shaved head.
On top of his prison sentence, Hubbard was ordered to pay the state about $4,700, state-run news agency TASS reports. The 72-year-old has been in custody since April 2022 and his sentence will include the more than two years he has already spent behind bars.
He will serve out the remainder of his prison term in a labour camp, or a “general regime colony,” ruled judge Alexandra Kovalevskaya.
The conviction comes after Hubbard reportedly accepted the mercenary charges and pleaded guilty, though members of Hubbard’s family are casting doubt on his confession. The 72-year-old allegedly said in an interview dispersed to Russian media that he was “incited by the Ukrainian media” to join the military and that he was taken captive by Russian servicemen who “treated him well,” TASS reports.
Hubbard’s sister Patricia Hubbard Fox told Reuters in an interview that she doesn’t believe her brother took up arms against Russia, considering his age and the fact that he held pro-Russian views.
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“He is so non-military,” Fox said. “He never had a gun, owned a gun, done any of that…He’s more of a pacifist.”
Fox and another relative told Reuters that Hubbard has spent decades abroad teaching English, including in Japan and Cyprus. He moved to Ukraine in 2014 and lived for a time with his girlfriend, a Ukrainian woman, before the pair broke up and he started living alone in Izyum, a city just south of Kharkiv near the Ukraine-Russia border.
His family members described him as an isolated person with few connections to locals. The last time Fox spoke to her brother was on Skype in September 2021, about six months before he was detained by Russia.
Hubbard is the first American known to have been convicted on charges of fighting as a mercenary in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The charges carried a potential sentence of 15 years, but prosecutors asked that Hubbard’s age be taken into account along with his admission of guilt, Russian news reports said.
Arrests of Americans have become increasingly common in Russia in recent years. Concern has risen that Russia could be targeting U.S. nationals for arrest to use later as bargaining chips in talks to bring back Russians convicted of crimes in the U.S. and Europe.
Also on Monday, a court in the city of Voronezh sentenced American Robert Gilman to seven years and 1 month for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers while serving a sentence for another assault.
According to Russian news reports, Gilman was arrested in 2022 for causing a disturbance while intoxicated on a passenger train and then assaulted a police officer while in custody. He is serving a 3 1/2-year sentence on that charge.
Last year, he assaulted a prison inspector during a cell check, then hit an official of the Investigative Committee, resulting in the new sentence, state news agency RIA-Novosti said.
The U.S. and Russia in August completed their largest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, a deal involving 24 people, many months of negotiations and concessions from other European countries, which released Russians in their custody as part of the exchange. Several U.S. citizens remain behind bars in Russia following the swap.
— With files from The Associated Press
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