The American teacher released from a Russian prison this week was put behind bars because he is American – facing heinous physical and sexual abuse, including being forced to crawl like a dog, according to a report.
“They treated us worse than animals,” Ihor Shishko, a former Ukrainian prisoner imprisoned alongside Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired teacher from Michigan, said of the hellish conditions they endured in Russian prisons.
Hubbard was released Wednesday following negotiations between the United States and Moscow after being imprisoned for more than four years for fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, who was visiting St. Petersburg at the time, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” after Hubbard’s release.
“You talk so much about my president, President Trump, that he is a humanitarian. You are also a humanitarian, sir,” Witkoff told the Russian leader.
However, Hubbard was horribly beaten, electrocuted and sexually assaulted while behind bars, according to Ihor Shishko, a former Ukrainian prisoner who was imprisoned alongside the teacher in the Bryansk region of western Russia, the Times reported.
The former prisoner, who now runs a rehabilitation center for veterans in northeastern Ukraine, blasted Witkoff’s flattery of Putin as “humanitarian” and calling it “shameful and despicable.”
Shishko claimed that Hubbard was forced to crawl around the prison like a dog, tortured with electric shocks and subjected to sexual abuse involving genital fondling games in exchange for food, Shishko told the outlet.
He said he bandaged Hubbard’s knees after his skin was torn off by being forced to crawl on the ground while serving a seven-year sentence in the freezing and very cramped prison.
“How you can call this humanitarianism, in any sense, is just totally confusing, like it’s some kind of political game. If Steve Witkoff didn’t know what was done to Stephen and us, he should have known,” Shishko said.
Shishko said prison guards seemed to single out Hubbard because he was American.
“It was to show us our place, to show that they hated us, and for their own pleasure. It was every day, 365 days a year,” he said. “Every time there was a rotation of guards and they heard there was an American there, they were like, ‘Where is the American?’ Bring him here.’ And they were harder on him because he was unusual.”
Hubbard also faced severe social isolation since he spoke neither Russian nor Ukrainian, Shishko said.
“For Stephen, it was also more difficult mentally because he didn’t understand why he was being detained,” Shishko said. “The Ukrainians had more or less accepted their fate, but he was still trying to explain why he shouldn’t be here and that he had rights.
“It was 100% clear to us that Stephen had never been a soldier and it was very obvious. »
Hubbard, a U.S. Air Force veteran, taught English overseas and retired to Cyprus in 2012. He then moved to Ukraine to live with a woman he had met and remained in the country after their relationship ended, his lawyers said.
Prosecutors argued that Hubbard signed a contract with Ukraine’s military after Russia’s invasion in 2022, fighting on kyiv’s side until his capture two months later in April.
In 2024, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. His lawyers and family have denied Russian accusations that he was involved in any military activity.
“He was just bait. It was all about bait. And that’s why they kidnap Americans,” his sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“Steven James Hubbard is the face of America,” she said. “They could do this to anyone. They saw him by chance. ‘Oh, he’s an American, let’s go get him.'”
The retired teacher didn’t know he was being released until he boarded a plane and saw the American flag, according to Hubbard Fox.
Hubbard is expected to visit the White House in the coming days, Trump told reporters Wednesday evening. He was taken to San Antonio for evaluation.
With post wires
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