Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Russian article.
The sister of former Russian detainee Stephen Hubbard says her brother's condition is better than the family expected. The 74-year-old American was released from Russia after more than four years in detention and returned to the United States last week.
"It was incredible. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s simply unbelievable to realize that he is free and has escaped the hell he spent nearly five years in," his sister, Patricia Hubbard, said in a recent interview with VOA.
"He underwent all the examinations and tests. Now he needs to rebuild his muscles and regain his strength," she said.
Russian forces detained Stephen Hubbard in the Russian occupied-Ukrainian town of Izium in April of 2022, where he had lived and taught English since 2014. Russia convicted him of being a mercenary and sentenced him to six to 10 years in a penal colony in October of 2024. Patricia Hubbard says her brother was never a mercenary.
"That was just a pretext to take his property," she told VOA, adding that her brother had absolutely no intention of joining the Ukrainian military or taking part in the Russia-Ukraine war.
"He hated the war. He was against it. Stephen was never a military man. Yes, he served in the U.S. Air Force, but that was not during wartime," she said. "As a child, he never got into fights. He wasn’t one of those boys who was always getting into trouble. He was a good, quiet child who took part in the [Boy] Scouts and read a great deal. He always loved books."
Patricia Hubbard told VOA that she heard of her brother's possible release about two days before it happened.
"I was told that everything could change at the last minute," she said. "They [U.S. officials] did say, expect anything to happen at the last minute because that's happened before when a country will say they're going to let someone out, then they like to torture you by not letting them out [until the] last minute."
She noted that the moment she saw her brother was special.
"We just hugged. We kept telling each other, “I love you,” over and over again. We hugged for a long time," Patricia Hubbard said.
Stephen Hubbard spent the first days in the U.S. under medical evaluation. His sister says after a medical assessment, he was sent home with a new set of clothes, new medical records, a new passport, and identification.
"When someone is taken hostage, they lose everything. Everything is stripped from them," she told VOA.
Patricia, who holds a master's in psychological counseling, said she chose not to talk to her brother about his experience in the Russian jail, where she said he was tortured.
"Some of the guards who knew only a few words in English would shout, 'Die, American, die!' while beating him," she said.
"Psychologically, he is doing much better than expected," Hubbard said. "His faith has helped him enormously. Psychologically, he has been through a great deal. But he did say one thing. He said, 'I want to be around people I know and who love me.' He said there is no love in that place. No love at all. Only darkness."
While in the Russian jail, Patricia says her brother Stephen spent most of his time in complete isolation.
"And even when someone else was nearby, they didn’t speak the same language," she told VOA. "There was no television or radio. He had no sense of time. He had absolutely no idea how much the world had changed over the past five years. All of it is a shock to him. It’s as if you had fallen into a coma and then woken up.”