Friday, September 27, 2024, 1:28 p.m.
Stephen Hubbard, a 73-year-old American citizen, was sent to trial by Russia this Friday after being accused of participating in the war as a “mercenary” in the Ukrainian ranks and faces a sentence of between seven and fifteen years in prison for the charges against him. The man has been remanded in custody for six months, the Russian state news agency reported.
“The court has received the materials of the case against Hubbard,” a spokesperson for a Moscow court told the TASS news agency, but the court report does not clarify when or where Hubbard was arrested.
The hearing is scheduled for next Thursday, while Washington remains silent on the situation of the prisoner with American nationality. Hubbard, born in Michigan, had lived in the Ukrainian province of Kharkiv since 2014 and with the start of the Russian invasion in 2021 he joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Illegal border crossing
The Russian authorities have also opened a case this Friday against three foreign journalists, two Americans and one Romanian, for “illegally crossing” into the Kursk region, occupied by Ukrainian troops since August, to carry out reports.
The informants would not be in Russia, but they still face five years in prison under the Russian Penal Code. The two Americans, Kathryn Diss and Fletcher Yeung, work for the Australian network ABC, and the Romanian journalist Mircea Barbu works for the HotNews media.
The three are suspected of having “illegally crossed the border of the Russian Federation in the Kursk region”, as announced by the Federal Security Service (FSB) in a brief statement in which it added that cases have been opened against twelve informants. foreigners for accusations of this type since August 17.
The Ukrainian army launched a surprise offensive in that border region on August 6, which marked the first entry of a foreign army into Russia since World War II. The Russian forces launched a counteroffensive and claim to have recovered ground, compared to the version of the Zelensky Government that claims to maintain control over a hundred towns and about 1,000 square kilometers. Several foreign media carried out reports in the area occupied by kyiv forces.
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