{"id":80297,"date":"2026-10-21T16:54:56","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T21:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/21\/putin-orders-release-of-jailed-american-as-he-meets-trump-envoy-for-ukraine-talks\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T16:54:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T21:54:56","slug":"putin-orders-release-of-jailed-american-as-he-meets-trump-envoy-for-ukraine-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/21\/putin-orders-release-of-jailed-american-as-he-meets-trump-envoy-for-ukraine-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin orders release of jailed American as he meets Trump envoy for Ukraine talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Russia frees Stephen Hubbard after US request while Steve Witkoff praises Putin, wanted by ICC as war criminal, as a \u2018humanitarian\u2019<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/live\/2026\/oct\/21\/donald-trump-south-carolina-data-centers-midterms-ukraine-witkoff-russia-latest-news-updates\">US politics live \u2013 latest updates<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Vladimir Putin ordered the release of an American man from a Russian jail as he met Donald Trump\u2019s envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday for fresh talks on ending the war in Ukraine, amid increasingly close relations between Moscow and Washington.<\/p>\n<p>Trump had previously asked Putin to free Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old former teacher who had spent more than four years in Russian jails on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/oct\/07\/russia-court-convicts-american-stephen-james-hubbard-fighting-ukraine\">charges of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/oct\/21\/putin-witkoff-russia-ukraine-trump-stephen-hubbard-release\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russia frees Stephen Hubbard after US request while Steve Witkoff praises Putin, wanted by ICC as war criminal, as a \u2018humanitarian\u2019 US politics live \u2013 latest updates Vladimir Putin ordered the release of an American man from a Russian jail as he met Donald Trump\u2019s envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday for fresh &#8230; <a title=\"Putin orders release of jailed American as he meets Trump envoy for Ukraine talks\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/21\/putin-orders-release-of-jailed-american-as-he-meets-trump-envoy-for-ukraine-talks\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Putin orders release of jailed American as he meets Trump envoy for Ukraine talks\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}