A Prisoner Release From Hell: the Potentially Catastrophic Human Cost of Trump’s Deal

On October 21, 75-year-old American Stephen Hubbard gained his freedom after more than four years in Russian captivity. That’s the good news.

The bad news is, through no fault of his own, Mr. Hubbard’s release is being turned into political cover for policies that could condemn untold numbers of Ukrainians to murder, torture and imprisonment.

The release of Mr. Hubbard is now being used by US President Donald Trump as a diplomatic trophy to justify the isolation and abandonment of Ukraine for an American realignment with Putin’s Russia.

This comes during a week in which the president has pushed regime change in Ukraine, falsified an energy ceasefire, restricted life-saving information sharing with Kyiv, and scorned Congressional law and intent by defying federal statute through his efforts to suspend oil sanctions and purchase diesel from the Kremlin, thus funding the Russian war machine.

The danger Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff are creating to real human lives cannot be overstated. With the release of Hubbard, both men have given Putin a form of cover and absolution for war crimes past, present and future. They have taken an occasion for celebrating one American’s freedom and turned it into an exercise in rehabilitating his torturer.

Moscow is taking cues from Trump. They have dramatically escalated their strikes on civilians and energy infrastructure in their effort to depopulate cities and crush the Ukrainian spirit. The result is that Ukraine’s president is noticeably worn down, and her people are in their most vulnerable position since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

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As Putin takes lives, Witkoff canonizes him

On Oct. 19, 2026, Trump told reporters, “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven’t been doing much” – the same day a Russian drone strike on a park in Nova Vodolaha killed a one-year-old girl in her stroller and fatally wounded her mother.

Now the White House is presenting the world with a macabre fiction: that a man recognized by many as perhaps the greatest war criminal of the 21st century should be celebrated as “a humanitarian.”

It was just a month ago on Sept. 5, that Trump’s envoy to the Kremlin, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, addressed Putin in Moscow:

“When we retire, we’ll have all these incredible stories and incredible memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all.”

During a week where Putin ordered missile strikes targeting civilians which ended the lives of infants and mothers, Witkoff looked Putin in the eyes and said:

“You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. I commend you.”

When pressed by reporters about Witkoff’s encomium of Putin, both Trump and Vice President JD Vance came to his defense.

The obsequious comment jolted the international community working on behalf of a free Ukraine. It also drew sharp criticism from members of the president’s own party.

“Another embarrassment,” Representative Don Bacon (R-Neb.) wrote on X.

Outgoing Republican Senator Thom Tillis, an outspoken opponent of Trump’s Russia appeasement strategy, had particularly choice words publish on X Oct. 21:

“WTF, Steve? Look up the definition of ‘humanitarian.’ What an embarrassing and outrageous thing to say. You should go back to Ukraine and ask the families of the children Putin has kidnapped and murdered whether they agree your friend Putin is a ‘humanitarian.’”

Right-wing commentator Laura Loomer said:

“If [Putin] is such a humanitarian how come the private jet they flew Stephen Hubbard back on did not have the other eight American hostages who are being held hostage right now by Vladimir Putin in Russia.”

How Putin “the Humanitarian” treated Hubbard

Not mentioned by Witkoff in his dialogue with Putin was the context of Mr. Hubbard’s imprisonment. Nor did the Witkoff acknowledge that Russia is a signatory to and legally bound by the Fourth Geneva Convention which classifies torture, inhumane treatment, and unlawful confinement of protected civilians as grave breaches constituting war crimes.

The release of Mr. Hubbard emerges against a backdrop of a horror show of heinous crimes committed by Russians against civilians in 2022 in the town of Izyum, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.

Like Bucha, the name Izyum has become synonymous with Russian atrocities. Putin’s forces occupied Izyum from early April until Sept. 10, 2022, subjecting residents to arbitrary detention, beatings, rapes, electric shocks, executions and other torture documented by human-rights investigators.

On Sept. 15, days after liberation, Ukrainian authorities announced the discovery of a vast burial site in a nearby pine forest. Investigators recovered 447 bodies between Sept. 16 and 23, including women and children. Some had their hands bound or ropes around their necks; others bore gunshot wounds, knife wounds, broken limbs and burns. According to regional prosecutors, at least 30 bodies showed visible signs of torture.

Mr. Hubbard was a 71-year-old retired school teacher. Investigators told ABC News that Russian soldiers seized Hubbard from his home in April 2022, then took him to a detention and torture site in nearby Balakliya where he was abused.

Russia falsely alleged that the 71-year-old man was a mercenary. They wanted an American prisoner with whom they could blackmail the United States for such a day like the one provided by Trump and Witkoff.

A closed Moscow trial resulted in a sentence of six years and ten months in October 2024. His family disputed the mercenary accusation and the credibility of his reported confession. The United States designated him wrongfully detained.

Eyewitnesses reported how Hubbard was repeatedly tortured in prison by Putin’s men. Former fellow prisoner Ihor Shyshko, interviewed by AFP, said guards repeatedly beat Hubbard with sticks and truncheons, kicked him, attacked him with dogs, deprived him of food, and forced him to crawl through corridors.

Shyshko separately told ABC that prisoners experienced electric shocks, freezing conditions and starvation rations. He recalled Hubbard becoming unable to walk properly, with severely damaged knees, and believed his American nationality brought harsher treatment. Russia denied US diplomats access to Hubbard.

What did Trump trade for Hubbard?

According to Trump nothing, something, everything, but actually nothing.

The president’s incoherent explanations were punctuated by unhinged personal attacks and volleys of gaslighting aimed at reporters seeking straightforward answers.

“We gave nothing in exchange, which is very rare,” Trump boasted.

He added: “And we’re getting him back because of me.”

Next, he insisted that imposing sanctions on Russia would have prevented Hubbard’s release: Washington had given Moscow nothing, but lifting sanctions and funding Russia was essential to bringing the American home.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed the obvious question: Did that not mean Russia had received something in exchange? Trump resorted to bullying:

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a dummy… You’re a low-IQ person.”

ABC News correspondent Karen Travers followed up, asking how waiving sanctions to secure Hubbard’s release could amount to giving Russia nothing. Trump’s response to the obvious contradiction he had created was: “Are you a stupid person?”

Trump then introduced another justification: “Russia has had very little input into Iran.” He suggested that Moscow’s supposed restraint should also count in its favor when considering sanctions.

That characterization clashes with statements made by Trump’s administration officials who acknowledged Russian assistance to Iran with the targeting of American servicemen, as well as other support for Iranian attacks on American targets in the Gulf.

One man’s freedom, Putin’s political windfall

In 1938, US Ambassador Joseph Davies returned from a meeting with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and wrote admiringly: “His demeanor is kindly, his manner almost deprecatingly simple,” adding: “He gave me the impression of being sincerely modest.”

The commentary did not age well.

The backlash became especially public with the 1943 film adaptation of his book, “Mission to Moscow,” which defended Soviet purge trials and portrayed Stalin sympathetically. Journalist and anti-Stalinist Suzanne La Follette, later a founding editor of National Review, condemned it as “the first instance in our country of totalitarian propaganda for mass consumption.” Critics nicknamed it “Submission to Moscow.”

Eighty-eight years later, an American envoy is again mistaking a Kremlin dictator’s cunning cordiality for humanity.

Recall that Witkoff played a role in the January 2025 release of hostages held by Hamas. At the time, he made it clear that Hamas “does not appear to be acting in good faith.”

Would Witkoff have called Hamas “humanitarian” for releasing a hostage it had brutalized? Unlikely. Yet he bestows sycophantic praise on Putin for freeing an American hostage who was illegally taken prisoner and brutalized by Russia.

Unwitting pawn

Yes, a prisoner has been freed from his Russian torturers. Thank God.

The tragedy is that Hubbard finds himself an unwitting pawn in a game of international brinkmanship, in which the president of the United States and the leader of the Russian Federation are united in an effort to use him to provide both men with a “win.”

Trump is desperate for a deal, any deal. He has determined that undermining Ukrainian national security and aligning with Russia is the critical path to a fast win.

Trump’s motivations appear clear. He hopes to distract the public and avoid imminent catastrophe at the midterms by casting Ukraine as the scapegoat for the oil crisis created by his war in Iran, and Russia as the savior who will win the day. He wants to brag that he has negotiated a prisoner release. Importantly, he wants to create a strategic realignment between the United States and Russia before the Democrats take over Congress following the midterms and his administration becomes the subject of perpetual investigations and potential impeachment hearings.

Back in Moscow, an overjoyed Putin finds himself allied with the White House against Kyiv. He hopes to leverage the relationship to save his oil refineries from attack, give himself carte blanche to target Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilians, secure American funding for his war machine through diesel sales, force regime change in Kyiv, and pressure Ukraine to surrender sovereign territory.

And the reality is that Putin will read every concession as permission to demand more. He will interpret every American threat against Kyiv as evidence that his campaign of continued violence is working.