“According to the media, in 2014 Stefan Hubbard moved to the city of Kharkiv”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
State media reported on September 27 that when the trial of Michigan native Stephan Hubbard began, prosecutors asked the court to keep him in custody, saying he was a flight risk and could “continue criminal activity” if released.
The judge agreed to the prosecutors’ request and ordered that Hubbard must remain in pretrial detention until at least March 26, 2025.
Hubbard’s previous detentions remain unknown, as there have been no reports or official statements about his arrest or how he ended up in Moscow.
“We are aware of reports of the arrest of an American citizen. Due to confidentiality restrictions, we are unable to provide further comment,” the US Embassy in Moscow said in a statement.
According to the media, in 2014 Stefan Hubbard moved to the city of Kharkiv, where he lived with a local woman, who later left him.
At the end of May 2022, three months after the start of Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine, Telegram channels and mass media close to the Russian government published a video of a man who called himself Stephan James Hubbard and said that he and his partner had moved to the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region, where witnessed how the Ukrainian armed forces “fired on Izyum for propaganda purposes and to create panic among local residents.”
It was unclear under what circumstances or where the video was taken, but the woman with the profile Trisha Hubbard Fox (Trisha Hubbard Fox) said in a May 27 post that her brother, Stephan James Hubbard, was “kidnapped in Ukraine almost three years ago ” and that there are two videos of him being tied up being beaten by “Russian Chechen rebel soldiers”.
Moscow has been accused of going after US citizens, detaining them on trumped-up charges to then use them as bargaining chips in negotiations to return Russians convicted of crimes in the US and other Western countries.
Several US citizens remain behind bars in Russia after the August 1 swap of 16 people whom Moscow agreed to release in exchange for eight Russians convicted of crimes who are serving prison terms in the US and Europe.
Among those released by Russia were US citizens – Radio Liberty journalist Alsou Kurmasheva, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Hershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan.