{"id":698,"date":"2026-10-21T13:01:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T13:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=698"},"modified":"2026-10-21T13:01:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T13:01:23","slug":"russia-frees-american-stephen-hubbard-witkoff-putin-no-swap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=698","title":{"rendered":"RUSSIA FREES 74-YEAR-OLD AMERICAN STEPHEN HUBBARD! | Putin dropped the news mid-meeting with Trump\u2019s envoy, and the White House says no swap was needed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He\u2019s coming home. Russia has released <strong>Stephen Hubbard<\/strong>, a 74-year-old American and former teacher from Michigan, as President <strong>Vladimir Putin<\/strong> met US envoy <strong>Steve Witkoff<\/strong> in St Petersburg on Wednesday, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c6m24l9v3745o\">BBC<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n<p>Putin delivered the news right at the top of the meeting. \u201cHe is at Pulkovo Airport,\u201d he told Witkoff in front of the cameras, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/10\/21\/russia-ukraine-putin-witkoff-peace\">Axios<\/a> reported. President Trump then posted that Hubbard was \u201con his way back home\u201d and that \u201cthere was no \u2018swap\u2019 necessary,\u201d saying the release followed a request he \u201cmade directly\u201d to Putin last week. Some earlier releases of Americans from Russia came through prisoner swaps.<\/p>\n<p>Hubbard was captured by Russian forces in Izyum, Ukraine, shortly after the 2022 full-scale invasion. He was accused of serving in a defence unit there and was sentenced in 2024 to almost seven years in a penal colony. The State Department had classified him as \u201cwrongfully detained.\u201d CBS News reported he had been in poor health and was expected to be flown to Texas for treatment.<\/p>\n<p>And the politics? Witkoff gushed: \u201cYou are a humanitarian also sir, and I salute that.\u201d He also asked Putin to consider renewing three-way peace talks with Ukraine and thanked him for a deal to import Russian diesel. Trump suggested that if sanctions had gone ahead, Hubbard talks \u201cwould have come to a complete and total halt.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/russia-american-released-stephen-hubbard-ukraine-witkoff-2c7e34d6606be242ed4a7473e57110c7\">AP<\/a> noted the release comes as Trump has taken a series of actions meant to benefit Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>Ukrainian President <strong>Volodymyr Zelensky<\/strong> wrote that \u201cmuch depends on whether the American side can hear something new from Russia today \u2013 about peace, and not about continuing the war.\u201d One man is free. The war grinds on into its fifth year.<\/p>\n<p><em>Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c6m24l9v3745o\">BBC News<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/russia-american-released-stephen-hubbard-ukraine-witkoff-2c7e34d6606be242ed4a7473e57110c7\">AP<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/10\/21\/russia-ukraine-putin-witkoff-peace\">Axios<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Putin dropped the news mid-meeting with Trump\u2019s envoy, and the White House says no swap was needed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/bb-hubbard-freed-russia-1021.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}