Fox News’ Benjamin Hall gives health update after getting injured in Ukraine

• Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall and colleagues came under attack while reporting in Ukraine in March.
• In Hall’s first public comments after the attack, he paid tribute to cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and fixer Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, who tragically passed away.
• Hall detailed his horrific injuries but said he felt “lucky” to have survived.

Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, who was severely injured in an attack that killed two of his colleagues in Ukraine, made his first public statements on Thursday.

Hall wrote on Twitter, “Its been over three weeks since the attack in Ukraine and I wanted to start sharing it all. But first I need to pay tribute to my colleagues Pierre and Sasha who didn’t make it that day. Pierre and I traveled the world together, working was his joy and his joy was infectious. RIP” 

He was referring to two of his colleagues, Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and fixer Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, who accompanied him while he was reporting in Ukraine.

According to Fox News at the time, Hall, Zakrzewski, and Kuvshynova were in Kyiv on March 14 when their vehicle “was struck by incoming fire.” Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova tragically passed away. The network did not attribute their deaths to a specific nation, but Ukraine’s advisor to ministry of internal affairs, Anton Gerashchenko, said that “artillery fire from Russian-fascist forces” killed Kuvshynova and Zakrzewski.

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott gave tribute to Zakrzewski, who had “covered nearly every international story for Fox News from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria,” and had “unmatched” talent and passion as a journalist.

Hall survived the attack and was evacuated from Ukraine days later.

Hall shared a picture of himself on a stretcher and detailed his injuries: “I’ve lost half a leg on one side and a foot on the other. One hand is being put together, one eye is no longer working, and my hearing is pretty blown.” Still, he considers himself “pretty d*** lucky to be here.” 

Before Hall’s injury, he rebuked Greg Gutfield, a Fox News host for political talk show “The Five,” for saying that reports on Ukraine just replay the same images to drum up “some kind of emotional response out of you, because that makes a profit for news companies.”

Hall had stated, “This is not the media trying to drum up some emotional response. This is absolutely what’s happening. It is an absolute catastrophe. And the people caught in the middle are the ones who are really suffering.” 

Another American journalist, Brent Renaud, was fatally shot in Ukraine. He and another journalist, who was injured, were traveling to film refugees in the town of Irpin, outside the capital of Kyiv, when Russian forces shot at them, according to Kyiv’s chief of regional police force.

Source: CBS News