Russia has released retired American teacher Stephen Hubbard, 74, in the latest sign of deepening ties between the two countries as Washington pressures kyiv to accept a deal ending Moscow’s war.
News of Hubbard’s release came as U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff spoke with President Vladimir Putin Wednesday morning in St. Petersburg. In remarks carried by Russian state news agencies, Putin said Hubbard was at the airport and Witkoff congratulated the Russian leader on his release. “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, that he’s a humanitarian. You’re a humanitarian, too, sir,” Witkoff said.
The United States has been courting the Kremlin for weeks, and the release of Hubbard — a retired Michigan professor held in Ukraine in 2022 — will give President Donald Trump a victory to tout after backlash at home and abroad for distancing himself from kyiv in the conflict.
Trump said Tuesday he had called on Putin to release Hubbard, who was detained on charges he denies of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine. He was the last American designated as “wrongfully detained” in Russia by the State Department.
The meeting between Putin and Witkoff, which Jared Kushner was expected to attend virtually, came after U.S. negotiators met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.
Ukraine presented new ideas and proposals during those negotiations, a U.S. official told NBC News, adding that “significant progress” had been made as the Trump administration stepped up its peace efforts.
Diplomacy has made little progress in months, and the renewed U.S. effort has drawn widespread criticism as Trump announced a series of measures aimed at supporting Russia while Ukraine accused the United States of withdrawing crucial support.
“We want Zelensky to make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, intensifying a pressure campaign that has fueled concerns that the United States is no longer committed to defending kyiv against Moscow’s invaders. “We gave a lot to Ukraine. We received absolutely nothing in return except heartbreak, death and enormous monetary losses,” Trump said.
Witkoff told Putin on Wednesday that the “groundwork” had been laid to end the fighting and that he had brought documents outlining approaches to a possible deal. He also said he hoped the Russian leader would consider resuming trilateral negotiations.
Zelensky said a possible trilateral meeting of leaders was “one of the important ideas” raised in Oslo after Tuesday’s talks, which also included the leaders of Norway and Finland.
Putin has so far insisted that any meeting with Zelensky could only take place once a deal is finalized and takes place in Moscow, which would not work out for the Ukrainians. The Kremlin has also shown few signs of abandoning its harsh demands, which include seizing Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbass region.
Trump signed a diesel deal with Russia earlier this month and lifted new sanctions on Moscow, while kyiv says it received no warning about at least three major Russian attacks and restrictions on Elon Musk’s Starshield satellite service continue to hamper its air defenses and battlefield operations.
After his talks with Witkoff on Tuesday, Zelensky told reporters that recent problems in security cooperation with the United States had been resolved.
“We are grateful that intelligence now works – I’m talking about early warning systems, which are very important for our people, for our children and our civilians,” he said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Oslo negotiations “positive” but said “nothing unexpected” came out of them. “Armed with these ideas,” Witkoff will travel to St. Petersburg, Rubio said, and share them with the Russian side “and let’s see if we can make progress.”
Rubio once again denied that the White House was behind any slowdown in Ukraine’s use of internet service, saying it was a problem for Musk and SpaceX. Musk himself said last week that any decision was up to Trump.
Deadly Russian attacks continued to batter Ukraine, with at least nine civilians killed across the country on Wednesday, as Moscow steps up strikes on energy infrastructure as winter approaches.
Authorities in the Russian border region of Bryansk said Wednesday that one person had been killed in a Ukrainian strike.
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