US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that imposing sanctions on Russia could have prevented the release of American citizen Stephen Hubbard, after earlier insisting that Washington had given “nothing in exchange” for his return, Anadolu Agency reported. Asked by CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins about that earlier claim as he departed the White House for a rally in South Carolina, Trump replied: “If I didn’t do that, you wouldn’t have Mr. Hubbard coming back.” When Collins asked whether he was saying sanctions had been eased in exchange for Hubbard’s release, Trump rejected her characterisation, Anadolu reported.

“If you would have put those sanctions on, or whatever you want to call them, you could forget about him. You’d never see him again. He’d be back in jail for 25 years,” Trump said, according to Anadolu. He defended his negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he had secured Hubbard’s return through what he called a “very good and very fast negotiation.” Those are the president’s own accounts of the exchange; neither Washington nor Moscow has published terms of any arrangement behind the release.

Trump also linked his decision to hold off on new sanctions to the Ukraine negotiations. “We’re negotiating with Russia right now on Ukraine. We are maybe close to a deal for the first time in a long time. When you’re close to a deal and you have very delicate negotiations, you don’t put sanctions on,” he told reporters, ANI reported. He added that he retains full authority to impose sanctions whenever he chooses, and argued that Russia and China had had very little input into Iran compared with US military action — again, the president’s own characterisation, reported by ANI.

Hubbard, a retired English teacher in his 70s who had denied charges that he was a “mercenary” fighting for Ukraine, was freed on Wednesday as Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin in Saint Petersburg, AFP reported. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Russia was “in principle, ready to resume” trilateral talks with Ukraine and the United States in mid-November, after the US midterm elections, but warned there was little “substance” in the Ukrainian and European peace proposals Witkoff had brought — a reminder that Moscow’s public readiness and Kyiv’s terms remain far apart.