Last week, we added 72-year-old Stephen James Hubbard to our hostage list as he stood trial on charges of having served as a mercenary fighter for Ukraine. A guilty verdict could bring a prison sentence of seven to fifteen years.

Hubbard’s trial, which began on September 27th, was scheduled to continue on Thursday, October 3rd. As of yesterday, October 5th, word from the closed-door session was that Hubbard had admitted guilt, and the prosecutors had asked for a sentence of seven years to be served in a maximum-security penal colony. The minimum sentence request was allegedly in deference to Hubbard’s advanced age.

Well, isn’t that special!

With a guilty plea having been entered — under who-knows-what circumstances — all that remains now is the sentencing by the court. At age 72, in the conditions known to exist in Russia’s maximum-security prisons, the length of the sentence hardly matters.

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And, as always, we pay homage to those others who have already been convicted and imprisoned on spurious political grounds. In no particular order, they are:

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Gordon Black, who was stationed in South Korea when he fell into a classic Russian “honey trap.” He was on his way back to his home in Texas, on two weeks’ leave, when he was lured to Vladivostok by the Russian girlfriend he had met in Korea. He was arrested in May of 2024 on charges of alleged larceny and murder threat, and sentenced the following month to a prison term of three years and nine months.

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Marc Fogel, a schoolteacher from Pennsylvania, was arrested in August of 2021 for possession of 0.6 ounce of legally-prescribed (in the U.S.) medical marijuana. In June of 2022 he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

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Ksenia Karelina, dual U.S.-Russian citizen, recently convicted of espionage and sentenced to 12 years in prison for contributing $51.80 to an American charity providing aid to Ukraine.

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Robert Romanov Woodland, a dual US-Russian citizen, was teaching English in Russia when he was arrested in January of 2024 for allegedly attempting to sell drugs. In July, he was sentenced to 12-1/2 years in a maximum security prison.

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Robert Gilman, already in jail in Russia serving a 4-1/2-year sentence (later reduced to 3-1/2 years on appeal) for kicking a police officer in 2022, found himself facing added charges in 2023 of punching prison staff in the head, and later also attacking a criminal investigator and another prison guard.

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David Barnes, an American citizen and resident of Texas, was arrested in January of 2022 while visiting his children, who had been taken to Russia from Texas by his Russian wife. He was charged and sentenced in the fall of that year to 21 years in prison for child abuse (allegedly occurring while in Texas), on his wife’s accusation. I really wish I knew more of this story!

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Eugene Spector, a dual US-Russian citizen already serving a four-year sentence handed down in June of 2021 on a bribery conviction, received additional charges of suspicion of espionage in August of 2023. No other details have been found, as the evidence is labelled “classified.”

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Michael Travis Leake, a rock musician and former paratrooper, was sentenced in July of this year to 13 years in prison on drug charges — specifically, suspicion of selling mephedrone, and organizing a drug trafficking business “involving young people.”

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And again I ask: Are any of these prisoners actually guilty of the charges leveled against them? I don’t know. But I do know that the recent timing of a number of the arrests, and the speed with which they were brought to trial, is a clear indication of Russia’s intentional roundup of American citizens to be used as (what I call) Putin’s Pawns.

What they are, quite simply, are HOSTAGES. And they will not — MUST not — be forgotten. Let’s shorten this list to zero.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/6/24