Stephen Hubbard, 72, was detained in japanese Ukraine in April 2022 and accused of combating for Ukraine.
A Russian courtroom has jailed a United States citizen for six years and 10 months after convicting him in a closed-door trial of combating for Ukraine as a mercenary.
Investigators mentioned Stephen Hubbard, who’s initially from the US state of Michigan, was paid $1,000 a month to serve in a Ukrainian territorial defence unit within the japanese metropolis of Izyum, the place he had been residing since 2014.
They alleged the 72-year-old signed up in February 2022, simply earlier than Russia launched its full-scale invasion, and was supplied with coaching, weapons and ammunition.
Hubbard was detained by Russian troopers two months later.
Hubbard’s case first turned public late final month when his trial started and he entered a guilty plea. At a listening to final week, the courtroom granted the prosecutors’ request for the proceedings to be held in secret with out the media.
Hubbard, who was handcuffed, shuffled slowly into the Moscow Metropolis Courtroom and stood with issue as Choose Alexandra Kovalevskaya learn out the sentence, in line with journalists from the Reuters and AFP information companies who had been within the courtroom.
Russia’s state information company RIA reported that Hubbard’s lawyer deliberate to lodge an attraction.
US State Division spokesperson Matthew Miller mentioned that Washington had restricted details about the case as a result of Russia had refused to grant consular entry to Hubbard.
He confirmed that Hubbard had been arrested two years in the past in Ukraine.
“We’re dissatisfied, as we regularly are, once they refuse to grant consular entry,” Miller instructed reporters in Washington. “They’ve an obligation to offer it and we’re going to proceed to press for it. We’re wanting on the case very carefully and contemplating our subsequent steps.”
Hubbard’s sister Patricia Hubbard Fox and one other relative have solid doubt on his reported confession, telling Reuters he held pro-Russian views and was unlikely to have taken up arms given his age.
In interviews, Fox and the opposite relative portrayed Hubbard as an remoted determine who had grown estranged from some members of the family throughout many years overseas instructing English, together with in Japan and Cyprus.
Fox mentioned Hubbard moved to Ukraine in 2014 and lived there for a time with a Ukrainian lady, surviving off a small pension of about $300 a month. He by no means realized Russian or Ukrainian, she mentioned.
Hubbard is certainly one of at the least 10 Individuals behind bars in Russia, practically two months after a prisoner swap between Moscow and the West freed three Individuals, together with Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and dozens of others.