Дональд Трамп. Фото: truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump
Donald Trump said he had refrained from imposing sanctions on Russia in order to secure the release of Stephen Hubbard, a US citizen convicted in Russia. Vladimir Putin announced Hubbard’s release earlier today during a meeting with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
“Numerous people, who requested that sanctions be immediately imposed on Russia, have called to apologize to President Trump in that they didn’t know that he was negotiating the release of Stephen Hubbard, a truly big and important deal for the U.S. If sanctions would have been placed, certainly those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
According to Trump, he directly asked Putin to release Hubbard last week. He claims that the American’s release was not part of an exchange and that the United States owes Russia nothing in return.
It should be recalled that 73-year-old Stephen Hubbard was sentenced in Russia to six years and 10 months in prison on mercenary-related charges. He lived in the city of Izium in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and joined the territorial defence forces in February 2022.
On October 16, Trump signed an executive order introducing “hellish sanctions” against Russia under the law proposed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, but the same order also suspended the sanctions “in the national interests of the United States”.