{"id":1455573,"date":"2026-10-21T13:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T10:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/putin-frees-american-held-in-russian-captivity-since-2022\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T13:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T10:41:15","slug":"putin-frees-american-held-in-russian-captivity-since-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/putin-frees-american-held-in-russian-captivity-since-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin frees American held in Russian captivity since 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia has released from prison 74-year-old American teacher Stephen Gabbard, who was detained in occupied Izyum, Kharkiv region, in April 2022. The man was accused of participating in Ukrainian territorial defense and sentenced to almost seven years in a penal colony. He is now preparing to return to the United States.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin announced the dismissal after the arrival of US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff to Russia, according<\/a> to the Russian propaganda agency TASS, The Moscow Times, and Meduza.<\/p>\n

Trump previously said he had personally asked Putin to release Gabbard. According to Russian media, the American is now preparing to fly home.<\/p>\n

Gabbard lived in Izyum, where he ended up after meeting a Ukrainian woman named Inna in Cyprus in 2012. The couple married, and the man worked as an online English teacher for several students from Japan.<\/p>\n

In April 2022, while Izyum was under Russian occupation, Gabbard was captured by Russian military forces. He was accused of joining the Ukrainian Territorial Defense. A Russian court later sentenced the American to six years and ten months in prison on charges of mercenary activity.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian soldiers who were held captive with Gabbard said he was repeatedly tortured because of his American citizenship. According to their testimony, the man was beaten, forced to stand for days, restricted in food, and denied proper medical care.<\/p>\n

As a reminder, US President’s Special Representative Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin<\/a> in Moscow. Among the main topics of the talks were the possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine, the resumption of trilateral contacts between Kyiv, Washington and Moscow, and the prospects for economic cooperation between the US and Russia.<\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , X<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia has released from prison 74-year-old American teacher Stephen Gabbard, who was detained in occupied Izyum, Kharkiv region, in April 2022. The man was accused of participating in Ukrainian territorial defense and sentenced to almost seven years in a penal colony. He is now preparing to return to the United States. Vladimir Putin announced the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":1455561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76873,76885],"class_list":["post-1455573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-events","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1455573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1455561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1455573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1455573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}