A Russian court on Monday sentenced 72-year-old American Stephen Hubbard to six years and 10 months in prison after being accused of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, Russian state media reported.

Hubbard pleaded guilty to charges in a hearing a week ago, according to Russian state agency RIA Novosti. Russian prosecutors told the agency that he “systematically received material compensation in the amount of $1,000” for his participation in the war on the Ukrainian side and was provided with training, weapons and ammunition when he allegedly signed up in February 2022.

State media reported Hubbard served in a territorial defense unit in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum before Russian soldiers captured him in early April 2022, a few weeks after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion. It’s not clear how he was transferred to Russia.

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His sister, Patricia Fox, who last spoke to her brother in 2021, previously told Reuters that Hubbard lived in Ukraine since 2014 but cast doubt on his confession, saying “he is more of a pacifist.”

Hubbard is originally from Big Rapids, Mich., and has worked for decades as an English teacher abroad, including in Japan and Cyprus.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow told Interfax news agency it is working to get consular access to Hubbard. In the months since a landmark prisoner exchange that freed Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, at least 10 U.S. citizens remain in Russian custody.

Arrests of American citizen have become increasingly common in Russia in recent years and especially since the invasion, with Washington accusing Moscow of targeting its citizens with baseless charges to use them as bargaining chips to secure the release of Russians convicted of grave crimes abroad.

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In the swap earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin welcomed back a convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany and several spies who worked undercover in Europe.

In a separate proceeding on Monday, a court in Voronezh, a city south of Moscow, sentenced another U.S. citizen and former Marine Robert Gilman to seven years and one month in prison for assaulting a prison guard.

He had already been serving 3½ years in Russia for kicking a police officer while drunk in Voronezh. Gilman told the court that he did not remember the incident but that he apologized to the officer at the time. Gilman had gone to Russia to study and obtain citizenship, his lawyers told Russian state news agency Tass.