Stephen Hubbard, 72, was hanciented in eastrict Ukraine in April 2022 and accengaged of battling for Ukraine.
A Russian court has jailed a United States citizen for six years and 10 months after convicting him in a shutd-door trial of battling for Ukraine as a mercenary.
Investigators shelp Stephen Hubbard, who is originassociate from the US state of Michigan, was phelp $1,000 a month to serve in a Ukrainian territorial defence unit in the eastrict city of Izyum, where he had been living since 2014.
They alleged the 72-year-greater signed up in February 2022, equitable before Russia started its filled-scale trespass, and was provided with training, arms and ammunition.
Hubbard was hanciented by Russian sgreateriers two months postpodemandr.
Hubbard’s case first became disclose postpodemand last month when his trial began and he go ined a culpable plea. At a hearing last week, the court granted the prosecutors’ ask for the carry onings to be held in secret without the media.
Hubbard, who was handcuffed, shuffled sluggishly into the Moscow City Court and stood with difficulty as Judge Alexandra Kovalevskaya read out the sentence, according to journaenumerates from the Reuters and AFP recents agencies who were in the court.
Russia’s state recents agency RIA telled that Hubbard’s lawyer deliberate to lodge an pdirect.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller shelp that Washington had restricted inestablishation about the case becaengage Russia had declined to grant consular access to Hubbard.
He validateed that Hubbard had been arrested two years ago in Ukraine.
“We’re disassigned, as we frequently are, when they decline to grant consular access,” Miller tgreater tellers in Washington. “They have an obligation to provide it and we’re going to carry on to press for it. We’re seeing at the case very shutly and pondering our next steps.”
Hubbard’s sister Patricia Hubbard Fox and another relative have cast ask on his telled confession, telling Reuters he held pro-Russian sees and was doubtful to have getn up arms given his age.
In intersees, Fox and the other relative portrayed Hubbard as an isopostpodemandd figure who had grown estranged from some family members during decades aexpansive teaching English, including in Japan and Cyprus.
Fox shelp Hubbard transferd to Ukraine in 2014 and dwelld there for a time with a Ukrainian woman, surviving off a minuscule pension of about $300 a month. He never lgeted Russian or Ukrainian, she shelp.
Hubbard is one of at least 10 Americans behind bars in Russia, proximately two months after a prisoner swap between Moscow and the West freed three Americans, including Wall Street Journal teller Evan Gershkovich, and dozens of others.
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