American Stephen Hubbard was released by Russia on Wednesday, the latest sign of warmer ties with the Kremlin as Washington pressures Kyiv to agree to a deal that ends Moscow’s war.
The news of Hubbard’s release followed talks between U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and President Vladimir Putin early Wednesday. Putin said that Hubbard, 74, was at the airport and Witkoff thanked the Russian leader for his release.
Washington has courted the Kremlin for weeks, and the release of Hubbard — a retired Michigan schoolteacher detained in Ukraine in 2022 — will give President Donald Trump a victory to tout after backlash at home and abroad for his tilt away from Ukraine.
Trump said Tuesday that he had raised with Putin the idea of releasing Hubbard, who was being held in Russia on charges he denies of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine.
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The meeting in St. Petersburg, which Jared Kushner was expected to join virtually, comes after the American negotiators met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.
Ukraine brought forward new ideas and proposals at those talks, a U.S. official told NBC News, adding that “meaningful progress” was made as the Trump administration intensifies its peace push.
Diplomacy has made little headway for months, and this renewed American effort has fueled backlash at home and abroad given a series of apparent moves to withhold support from Ukraine and align more closely with Russia.
Trump renewed his pressure campaign, which has fueled concern that the U.S. is no longer committed to Kyiv’s defense against its Moscow invaders.
“We want Zelenskyy to make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’ve given a lot to Ukraine. We’ve gotten absolutely nothing back except grief, death, tremendous monetary loss.”
Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said that Ukraine would dominate the talks between Putin and Witkoff at the Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg. Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev was also due to join, Ushakov said.
The goal for the meeting with Putin was to build on the progress made in Oslo, discuss the proposals with Russia and create a pathway toward direct negotiations, the U.S. official said.
Zelenskyy said that a potential trilateral leaders’ meeting 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 any meeting with Zelenskyy could only happen once a deal is finalized and take place in Moscow, a nonstarter for the Ukrainians. The Kremlin has also shown little sign of shifting from its hardline demands, which include seizing Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region.
Trump signed a diesel fuel deal with Russia earlier this month and waived new sanctions on Moscow, while Kyiv says it received no advanced warning about at least three major Russian attacks and that restrictions on Elon Musk’s Starshield satellite service continue to hamper its aerial defenses and battlefield operations.
After the talks with Witkoff on Tuesday, Zelenskyy told reporters the recent issues on security cooperation with the U.S. have been resolved.
“We are thankful that intelligence works now — I am speaking about early warning systems, which are very important for our people, for our children and civilians,” he said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the talks in Oslo “positive,” but said “nothing unexpected” came out of them. “Armed with those ideas,” Witkoff will go to St. Petersburg, Rubio said, and share them with the Russian side “and let’s see if we can make some progress.”
Rubio once again denied that the White House was behind any slowdown to Ukraine’s use of the internet service, saying this was an issue for Musk and SpaceX. Musk himself said last week any decision was down to Trump.
Deadly Russian attacks continued to hit Ukraine, meanwhile, with at least nine civilians killed across the country on Wednesday as Moscow ramps up its strikes on energy infrastructure ahead of winter.
Authorities in Russia’s border Bryansk region said Wednesday one person was killed in a Ukrainian strike.