An American teacher went to Ukraine. Now he is in a Russian prison.

Stephen James Hobard left America decades ago, first to Japan, then Cyprus and finally Ukraine. He did not like the government – any government, really.

He was a street, and he grew up in a small town in Michigan and traveled around the world before ending alone in the city of Ezuma -east when the Russians invaded on February 24, 2022.

Now, Mr. Hobard, a 73 -year -old English retirement teacher on Thursday, has become an unlikely in an international war. The Russians arrested him shortly after the invasion and accused him of fighting for Ukraine. They moved him to at least five different Russian detention centers before they went to trial on charges of being mercenary.

In October, it was convicted by a court in Moscow and Heal It has for about seven years in a punitive colony.

His case remained mostly under the radar. But last month, the Foreign Ministry said that Mr. Hobard was “wrongly detained” – to rise Its case and indicate that the United States believes that the charges are fabricated.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said he should not have been captured or move to a Russian prison.

Mr. Hobard’s sister and three former Ukrainian war prisoners with Mr. Hobard the conflict that fought for Ukraine. Former prisoners say they believe that he will die if he is not released. They say that he carried the same torture they did: he was beaten again and again, horrific by dogs, who were forced to stand throughout the day, every day, until he was stripped of naked for more than a month.

“They overcame our ankles and forced us to divisions, and tear the ligaments in this process,” said Ihur Shalko, 41, who said that he participated with a cell with Mr. Hobard. “Many men, some of them have been permanently injured. The conditions were out of humanity.

“The same thing happened to Stephen, but he was worse for him because he is an American,” added Mr. Shalchko, who was released in the exchange of prisoners last summer. “They stormed, and they screaming in the hallway:” We know that you are an American. You are dead here! “

The United States accused Russia of amplifying and inventing criminal charges against Americans so that they could be traded to the detained Russians elsewhere or used as international bargaining chips. After exchanging major names in August, Mr. Hobard is one of 13 Americans now known in Russian prisons. Mr. Hobard is the oldest. He is also the only known American who was imprisoned in Russia after taking from Ukraine.

only one Another American has been appointed to be held incorrectly held in Russia.

Mr. Hobard’s family was unable to find his prison. The Russian judge removed his case file, including even basic information such as the name of his lawyer, from a general outlook. The New York Times could not locate.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the American embassy in Moscow did not witness Mr. Hobard, despite Russia’s commitment to granting arrival. The embassy said that it will not comment on its case due to privacy concerns.

Mr. Shyshko said he tried to ask the American embassy in Kiev, but he could not overcome the front door.

“It is very annoying,” Patricia Hubbard Fox, 71, said, adding, “Now they took everything from him, and even his glasses.”

A quiet life

Mr. Hobard has always been a solo man. He loved his privacy. He did not like e -mail and social media. He was skeptical of government agencies that might spy on Internet jobs and the government’s tax.

He and his sister grew up in Big Rapids, the city of Michigan is very small. Their only mother sometimes offended them. Ms. Hobard Fox recalls, “We grew up at the end of the bull whip.”

As an adult, Mr. Hobard seemed to always search: He joined the Bible College in Tolsa, Okla, but it lasted only one year. He married young people, in 20.

Mr. Hobard was recruited in the Air Force, but he left three years after active service and two in the National Guard, especially in Sacramento, the records appear. He worked as an educational assistant in the Department of Local Veterans Affairs and studied in a nearby business college. His marriage collapsed and the wife of Mr. Hobard won the custody of their three children.

Ms. Hopard Fox said that Mr. Hobard fell in Seattle, where he obtained a master’s degree in English and met Japanese women who became his second wife.

In the mid -1980s, the couple moved to Japan, where Mr. Hobard taught the English language and joined the Eastern Orthodox Church. The couple had a son before divorce. After his son grew up, Mr. Hobard moved to Cyprus, where a son of his first marriage lived and where he fell in love with another woman, where. It was the Ukrainian.

In 2014, they moved to Isium. When he needs money, he told his sister, he taught the English online. No Ukrainian spoke, no Russian.

Mrs. Hobard Fox said that she last spoke with her brother on Skype in September 2021, while he was sitting to eat some porridge.

It is not clear whether the couple was separated or whether Ena is on vacation. But when the Russians invaded in February 2022, Mr. Hobard was alone.

After weeks, the Russians were captured by Isium. The next day, April 2, 2022, Mr. Hobard was arrested, according to RIA Novosti News Agency.

The circumstances are mysterious. The Russian authorities said that Mr. Hobard participated in February – a month of 70 years of age – for the regional regional defense unit to defend Ukraine and received training, weapons, ammunition and $ 1,000 per month. They said he was arrested while Manning Military checkpoints.

This was unlikely. She said that the regional defense unit had little weapons. No one was pushed. “There were no old men there,” she added.

Mr. Shalchko recalled that Mr. Hobard said he was detained at a checkpoint while fleeing.

“He wanted to get out of there, but he could not.”

“It is all American”

Mr. Hobard’s first detention camp was five miles on the Russian border. Andrei Stratops, the prisoner of another war, said that the Russians gave Mr. Hobard two English books: “The Eggs and I”, the 1945 memoirs by a young wife in a chicken farm, and “Beautiful Bones”, 2002 novel about a little girl whose soul reconciles with her rape and killing her . Read them again and again.

Mr. Stratoura, who speaks English, was placed in the tent of Mr. Hobard in June 2022.

“On that day he started smiling,” Mr. Stratoura, 30, remembers.

Mr. Strafts said 42 days together. Mr. Hobard talked about his life: a trip he made to Grand Canyon. His baptism in the Eastern Orthodox Church. His Japanese wife, Sumi. Their son, Hesashi. Your partner, where.

During his imprisonment, Mr. Strafts was reading those names for himself: Hesashi. Sumi. Inna. When he was released, he wanted to tell someone about the American who met him.

In late July 2022, Mr. Hobard was transferred, as Mr. Stratouins remember.

A Ukrainian Special Forces officer, who carried out the Hacker Hacard Call, met at the Stary Oscol prison in Beljorod, about 80 miles northeast of the detention camp, in early September. After an interrogation, he was like torture, Hacker said, he was transferred to a cell with Mr. Hobard, who gave him water and prayed for him.

“This is the first time that a person, an old man, a wise man, prayed for me,” said Hacker, 33, who determines the Times through his military advocacy mark because he is still fighting Russia.

Hacker said he met Mr. Hobard again after about a month, in Novuzipkov Prison. For two months, they were shelter in nearby cells. “I heard everything that was happening to him,” Hacker, who was released last spring.

Hacker said that Mr. Hopard had problems with his kidneys, stomach and rectum. He was bleeding. The Russian guards struck him and forced him to learn Russian words, Russian poets and Russian national anthem.

Hacker said: “The soldiers, guards and special forces looked at him as an enemy.” “Because Stephen is the American. It is the American spider. It is the American from Michigan. It is all American.”

Since Russian officials did not reveal any information about Mr. Hobard, it is impossible to check the accounts of former prisoners. But they are in line with each other and with other Ukrainian war prisoners.

In 2023, Mr. Hobard was transferred to a prison in Bakino, about 170 miles east of Moscow, where he participated in a cell with Mr. Shishko and 13 other men.

There, prisoners were interrogated, and they are often tortured, and they were shocked by electricity, beating and combustion, as said by Hacker and Mr. Shishko.

After the Russians found a trick on the prisoners, they were all stripped and transferred to the cold lower floor, where they had to walk naked in circles wearing slippers only for a month and a half.

Mr. Shishko said that the doctor told him, “Mut the scabies cannot multiply in the cold, and he will die with you.”

Lunch lunch often boil with some cabbage leaves. Dinner, residue of Russian prisoners, mixing together. The weight of Mr. Shyshko decreased to less than 130 lbs from about 240 pounds.

“Stephen, though, never surrendered,” said Mr. Shishko. He kept telling us: “These people are not human. Do not lose hope. He stood up to them and encouraged us to stick. “

One day, Mr. Hobard said he believed his sister might search for him.

Imprisonment

Mrs. Hobard Fox is concerned about her brother when the war started. But she could not reach it. In the end, I discovered that the Russians had seen an interview on Russian television in which he was Repeat Russian conversation points – The prisoners of war are often informed of what they say – and another video, which was briefly published on X, where the guards struck Mr. Hobard with a sandal.

She said she tried to speak to the American authorities, but she got a little help. It was not sure of what could be contacted.

In the middle of May 2024, Mr. Hobard disappeared from prison in Bakino and later appeared in the court’s actions in Moscow. At one hearing, before the judge closed the trial of the public, RIA Novosti stated that Mr. Hobard had acknowledged that he was guilty of being a mercenary, saying from the dock, “Yes, I agree with the indictment.”

In early October, Mr. Hobard – BentHis hair and his chopped hair were sentenced, and he was sentenced to six years imprisonment and 10 months in prison.

Ms. Hopard Fox said that she hopes that President Trump would be able to deal with the Russians. “He is an actor, and they know that he will not bear their foolishness,” said Ms. Hobard Fox.

She said that seeing her brother was beaten by a sandal that he reminded of seeing him as a child. She plans to sell her home in Colorado and buy one in Oklahoma, so that her brother can live with her when he goes out.

She said, “I love my house, but my brother lost everything.” “So I am doing this. I will give him a house.”

Reports by Himako Ueno contributed from Tokyo. Dzvinka Pinchuk, Yurii Syvala and Oleksandra Mykolysin from Kyiv; Shawn Houbler from Sadmanto. Suzan Bachi contributed to the research.