Ukrainians held alongside freed US prisoner Stephen Hubbard have said they witnessed him being beaten and humiliated by Russian guards during his four-year detention. Dmytro Khyliuk first met Hubbard at the Novozybkov prison in Bryansk, not far from Russia's border with Ukraine, in September 2022. "We heard it from the guards.
They came during inspections and were asking: in which cell is the American? And then they used obscene words. They threatened him, they mocked him from the first days." Ihor Shyshko also remembers Hubbard's arrival at the jail and says his nationality marked him out to the officers.
"It attracted such attention because they mocked him, forced him to learn the Russian language, sing the national anthem and repeat the rules of the prison schedule, which he could not read." Hubbard was captured in April 2022, when Russian soldiers occupied the eastern city of Izyum, where he was living with his Ukrainian partner. He was accused of serving in Ukraine's armed forces and convicted in a trial in Moscow before being sentenced to six years and 10 months. Shyshko and Khyliuk were held alongside Hubbard as he awaited trial.
Shyshko said he witnessed and heard Hubbard being beaten by prison guards and electrocuted with a stun gun. "They beat him on the legs, on the back, on the arms," he said. "Of course, they didn't give him food, they didn't give him medical care.
They kept him in the cold. "He was always treated more harshly, because he was an American. They claimed he was a mercenary, and said 'let's beat him'." Shyshko, a captured Ukrainian soldier, alleges Hubbard was subjected to sexual humiliation and abuse for the entertainment of the prison staff.
Accounts from the two former Ukrainian prisoners corroborate statements made by Hubbard's family that he was tortured in prison. The 74-year-old was released by the Kremlin after four-and-a-half years, on the day US special envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg to discuss the war in Ukraine. Witkoff praised the Russian President as a "humanitarian", despite the ongoing full-scale invasion and daily Russian attacks across Ukraine.
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