Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall made his first public comments on Thursday since he and his colleagues were attacked while reporting in Ukraine in March. Hall described the gruesome injuries he sustained during the attack – which also killed two of his colleagues, Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and fixer Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova – but said he felt “pretty damned.” happy to be here”.
“It’s been over three weeks since the attack in Ukraine and I wanted to start sharing everything,” Hall tweeted. “But first I have to pay tribute to my colleagues Pierre and Sasha who didn’t make it that day. Pierre and I have traveled the world together, the work was his joy and his joy was contagious. RIP”
Hall also posted a picture of herself on a stretcher and wrote: “To sum it up I lost half a leg on one side and a foot on the other. A hand is put together, an eye isn’t working anymore, and my hearing is pretty bad.”
In summary, I lost half a leg on one side and a foot on the other. A hand is put together, an eye isn’t working anymore and my hearing is pretty bad… but overall I feel pretty darn lucky to be here – and it’s the people that brought me here that are awesome! pic.twitter.com/HNjO6PbdGf
— Benjamin Hall (@BenjaminHallFNC) April 8, 2022
Still, Hall said he feels “pretty damn lucky to be here.”
Hall was reporting with Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova near Kyiv on March 14 when their vehicle “was struck by an approaching fire,” Fox News said in a statement at the time. Hall survived the attack and was evacuated from Ukraine days later, but Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova were killed.
Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said at the time that Zakrzewski had “covered almost every international story for Fox News from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria during his long tenure with us,” adding that “his passion and talent as a journalist is second to none were”.
Scott said Kuvshynova, 24, is “incredibly talented” and has spent weeks helping network crews navigate Kyiv, gathering intelligence and communicating with sources, “on duty around the clock to ensure.” that the world knows what is happening in their country. ”
This image released by Fox News Channel shows cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski on the job with colleagues, Fox News correspondent Steve Harrigan and senior producer Yonat Friling from Jerusalem background right, in Kyiv. Pierre Zakrzewski/AP
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said Kuvshynova and Zakrzewski were killed by “artillery fire from Russian fascist forces,” but the network did not attribute their deaths to any specific nation.
The news came just a day after another American journalist, Brent Renaud, was shot dead in Ukraine. The head of Kyiv regional police said Renaud was killed and another journalist injured by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, outside the capital Kyiv, while they were out filming refugees.
Before Hall was injured, he recently made headlines for scolding Greg Gutfield, co-host of Fox News political talk show The Five, after saying on-air that the coverage from Ukraine is “very similar like other stories we’ve been through the digital age where a picture is taken and then played back over and over again to elicit some sort of emotional response from you because that’s what makes news companies profitable.”
“This is not the media trying to evoke an emotional response,” Hall said. “That’s absolutely what’s happening.”
“This is an absolute disaster,” he added. “And the people caught in the middle are the ones who really suffer.”
More Victoria Albert