A Moscow court began hearing the case of a 72-year-old American man accused of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine, according to Russian news outlets.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoscow City Court began hearing the criminal case of 72-year-old American\u2026 over participating as a mercenary in the armed conflict on the side of Ukraine,\u201d RIA Novosti news agency said.<\/p>\n
It identified the individual as Stefan Hubbard, but noted that his name could be written differently, with social media posts indicating Stephen Hubbard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are aware of the reports of the arrest of an American citizen. Due to privacy restrictions we are unable to comment any further,\u201d the US embassy in Moscow said in a statement.<\/p>\n
According to RIA Novosti, the pensioner from Michigan relocated to Ukraine in 2014.
\nThe stories did not specify when or how the American landed in Moscow.<\/p>\n
At the hearing in Moscow’s top municipal court, a judge granted the prosecutor’s plea to hold him for six months on the grounds that he would attempt to flee, remanding him in detention until March 26, 2025.<\/p>\n
The next hearing in the matter was scheduled for next Thursday.<\/p>\n
According to Russian legislation, participating as a mercenary in an armed conflict can result in up to 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n
A video broadcast on YouTube channels in May 2022 featured a man who gave his name as Stephen James Hubbard and claimed to be in the city of Izyum\u00a0in the Kharkiv region.<\/p>\n
The individual says he was born in Big Rapids, Michigan, and moved to Izyum in 2014.<\/p>\n
He appears dishevelled, with a lengthy beard and unclean nails.<\/p>\n
Russia conquered part of the Kharkiv region, including Izyum, in the spring of 2022, shortly after commencing its operation, and Ukraine reclaimed Izyum in September 2022.<\/p>\n
Russia has jailed several US citizens in recent years on charges ranging from espionage and criticism of the Russian army to petty larceny and family conflicts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Moscow court began hearing the case of a 72-year-old American man accused of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine, according to Russian news outlets. \u201cMoscow City Court began hearing the criminal case of 72-year-old American\u2026 over participating as a mercenary in the armed conflict on the side of Ukraine,\u201d RIA Novosti news agency said. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":50114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50117,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50112\/revisions\/50117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}