Late Wednesday night, a military jet touched down at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas carrying a 74-year-old retired schoolteacher from Michigan. NBC News reported that the plane landed at about 10:49 p.m. local time (11:49 p.m. Eastern). After more than four years in Russian custody, Stephen Hubbard was home.
Every American should be glad about that, and the President and his team deserve credit for getting it done. But the way it happened deserves a closer look, because the terms of one release shape the risks every American abroad will face next.
Who Stephen Hubbard is
CBS News reports that Hubbard served in the U.S. National Guard and Air Force, retired from teaching, and was captured in Ukraine shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russian authorities accused him of manning a checkpoint for mercenaries, and in 2024 he was sentenced to almost seven years in a penal colony. He denies the charges, and his family has maintained his innocence throughout. He was the last American in Russia whom the State Department had formally designated as wrongfully detained.
He did not come home in good shape. CBS reported that Hubbard is in poor health and was expected to be treated at a military hospital in Texas. His lawyer, Martin De Luca, told NBC that he spoke with Hubbard as the plane was getting ready to take off. “He was overwhelmed with joy,” De Luca said. “The No. 1 thing he was excited about was seeing his children and family.” His family thanked “President Trump and his team for opening the dialog with Russia which led to this joyful day.”
How the release happened
The release came on Wednesday as U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg for talks on ending the war in Ukraine. Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said Hubbard was handed over to Witkoff at the city’s Pulkovo Airport, NBC reported. The Kremlin called it a goodwill gesture.
President Trump wrote on Truth Social that Hubbard was released “at the request of President Donald J. Trump, made directly to President Vladimir Putin in a telephone conversation last week,” and that the United States “was not required to give anything in return — an unprecedented situation for Russia. There was no ‘swap’ necessary for this release.”
That is a real difference from the past. As CBS notes, journalist Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan came home in 2024 in a complicated multi-country prisoner swap. Getting an American out without any swap at all is, on its face, a better outcome for the United States.
The fine print: sanctions and praise
The fuller picture is more complicated. CBS reported that Hubbard’s release came five days after the President waived some sanctions on Russia just before they were due to take effect, a decision Putin praised and members of Congress, including some Republicans, criticized. On Wednesday afternoon, the President tied the two together. “If I would have done that, you would not have Mr. Hubbard coming back,” he told reporters on the White House South Lawn, and he later wrote that if sanctions had been imposed, “certainly those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt.” NBC also reported that the President signed a diesel deal with Russia this month.
Then there was the envoy’s language. On video, Witkoff told Putin, “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian, you are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that.” NBC reported that lawmakers from both parties objected, with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, noting that Putin is “the aggressor in the war against Ukraine.”
Diplomats sometimes flatter. But words from an American envoy carry weight, and calling the man who ordered a war of conquest a “humanitarian” for freeing a prisoner his own government jailed hands Moscow a propaganda gift it did not have to earn.
Why the terms matter
Conservatives have long understood a simple rule: whatever you reward, you get more of. If foreign governments learn that holding an American can be traded for sanctions relief or praise, the incentive to seize the next one grows. The State Department already keeps a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Russia because of the risk of wrongful detention, and CBS reports that as many as 10 other Americans, including dual nationals, remain in Russian custody.
The administration has a tool built for exactly this problem. CBS reports that last year it created a designation for “state sponsors of wrongful detention,” which gives the State Department expanded authority to impose sanctions, export controls, and travel restrictions on countries that use detained Americans as leverage. It applied that label to Iran in February and Afghanistan in March. Russia, despite a long history of jailing Americans on questionable charges, has not been designated.
Bringing Hubbard home and holding Moscow accountable are not in conflict. Now that he is safe, Washington can say plainly that the hostage business is closed, apply the designation consistently, and make clear that sanctions policy is set by American interests, not traded for prisoners.
The bigger negotiation
The release also comes at a delicate moment in the push to end the war in Ukraine. NBC reported that Witkoff told Putin “groundwork” had been laid and that he brought documents outlining approaches to a possible deal. Ushakov said Russia is ready to resume trilateral talks with the United States and Ukraine from mid-November. President Zelenskyy told Fox News he would support talks involving himself, President Trump, and Putin. “We are maybe close to a deal for the first time in a long time,” the President said Wednesday.
Yet the fighting goes on. NBC reported that at least nine civilians were killed across Ukraine on Wednesday as Russia stepped up strikes on energy infrastructure ahead of winter, and that the Kremlin has shown little sign of dropping demands that include seizing Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region.
Peace through strength means negotiating from a position where the other side knows America will not pay for good behavior that ought to be free. A durable settlement depends on Moscow believing that the United States will keep pressure on until it gets one.
Welcome home
None of this takes away from the moment itself. An American veteran and teacher who spent more than four years in a Russian prison is back on American soil, and the President says Hubbard will visit the White House “over the next day or so.” Welcome home, Mr. Hubbard.
The next step is to make sure the next American traveler is never put in the same position, and that the price of his freedom never becomes a bargaining chip for the people who took it.
