Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall is accused of disregarding urgent security warnings before entering a high-risk area of Ukraine, where a Russian strike killed two members of his crew and left him with life-changing injuries.
The allegations form part of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by the parents of 24-year-old Ukrainian producer Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, who died in March 2022 alongside veteran Fox cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski.
Two security advisers assigned to Fox’s Ukraine operation have supported central parts of the family’s case. Speaking to NPR, they said the network and its prominent correspondent had been repeatedly warned to avoid the dangerous area northwest of Kyiv.
“If you took Benji out of the equation, this never would have happened,” former Fox security adviser Aaron King told NPR.
Fox News has strongly rejected the allegations, saying it will “respectfully defend against the inaccurate claims within this lawsuit.”
The network has maintained that “the safety of our journalists has always been our number one priority.”
Hall, for his part, has previously said he believed the crew was traveling to a location that would be considerably safer than the site they ultimately reached.
The British-American journalist nearly died in the March 14, 2022 attack. He lost his right leg below the knee, most of his left foot and part of his eyesight.
Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall lost his right leg below the knee, most of his left foot and part of his sight after surviving the deadly Russian strike outside Kyiv in March 2022
Ukrainian producer Oleksandra ‘Sasha’ Kuvshynova, 24, was killed in the strike while working with the Fox News team during Russia’s invasion
Veteran cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski was also killed when the vehicle carrying him, Hall and Kuvshynova was hit by the blast
Kuvshynova, Zakrzewski and two Ukrainian soldiers traveling with the journalists were killed in the attack.
The ill-fated assignment took place as warnings intensified about the escalating danger northwest of Kyiv, where Russian forces were advancing through the area.
A day earlier, American filmmaker Brent Renaud had been fatally shot in Irpin, whose mayor had publicly urged journalists to stay away.
Security adviser Shane Thomson, who has joined Kuvshynova’s parents in the lawsuit, said the threat was unmistakable.
“There was no way we were going there,” he told NPR. “No way. Not after the credible intel, what we had and everything what we had before. It was all on point. There’s nothing, no gray areas.”
During a Fox security meeting the evening before the deadly assignment, the instruction was allegedly just as direct: crews were to remain inside Kyiv’s city limits.
The following morning, Hall, Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova departed to film defensive trenches being built within the Ukrainian capital.
Hall has said their “explicit intention was to avoid the front lines, stay clear of active fighting, remain within the city’s borders.”
Benjamin Hall, Oleksandra ‘Sasha’ Kuvshynova and veteran cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski are pictured together in Ukraine before the deadly strike that killed Kuvshynova and Zakrzewski
Pierre Zakrzewski, right, and Oleksandra Kuvshynova, centre. were killed in Ukraine while they were traveling in a vehicle
Oleksandra Kuvshynova is seen on the streets of Ukraine covering the war. Cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski can be seen to her right
An Orthodox priest prays over a coffin of Oleksandra Kuvshynova, 24, in St. Michael Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 20, 2022
Kuvshynova’s parents, Andriy Kuvshynov and Iryna Mamaysur, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Fox News and Hall, alleging their daughter’s death was preventable and that repeated security warnings were ignored
But when Ukrainian troops refused to let them film at the trenches, the plan changed.
Two Ukrainian soldiers accompanying them suggested traveling to Horenka, a nearby suburb that had been devastated by Russian forces.
Hall later wrote that the crew understood Russian troops to be at least 30 miles away.
Fox’s attorneys have acknowledged in a court filing that Hall believed the location was safer than it really was and that he and the Ukrainian soldiers were wrong.
The family’s lawyers go much further and argue that Hall’s account was ‘patently and knowingly false.’
Their lawsuit also claims the crew’s security adviser gave Hall specific instructions not to travel anywhere that had not undergone a proper security assessment or venture beyond the checkpoint inside Kyiv where they had originally intended to film.
Hall’s team nevertheless traveled beyond the checkpoint and city limits, according to NPR.
As they returned toward Kyiv after filming scenes of destruction, disaster struck.
‘The first missile came out of nowhere, lands about 30 feet in front of us,’ Hall later recalled in an interview with Sean Hannity.
He said Zakrzewski screamed: “Reverse the car! Reverse the car!” The vehicle became stuck.
Hall shared harrowing images from his hospital bed after surviving the Russian strike, which left him with devastating injuries to his legs, eye and body
Hall smiled through a majority of the photos as he made progress in his recovery. He is seen above receiving treatment in his working leg
‘Pierre shouted, ‘Get out of the car! Everyone, get out of the car!’ And the next second, the second bomb hits right in front of the left of the car. And that one, I went black.’
Zakrzewski managed to escape the vehicle but suffered a devastating leg wound and bled to death beside the road, according to his widow’s lawsuit.
Kuvshynova and the two Ukrainian soldiers never managed to escape the vehicle.
Hall was eventually found alive and was evacuated from Ukraine before receiving extensive medical treatment.
Kuvshynova’s devastated parents say they were left largely in the dark about their daughter’s fate.
They claim nobody from Fox contacted them on the day of the attack and that it was Kuvshynova’s boyfriend, Ukrainian lawmaker Sviatoslav Yurash, who ultimately told them she had been killed.
Her father later retraced the crew’s route and said a Ukrainian commander told him that Hall had been warned not to continue beyond the checkpoint but had done so anyway.
The family was told 48 hours after the strike that Kuvshynova’s remains were in a morgue. Her father said her body was so badly burned they initially identified her from her clothes, with DNA testing later confirming her death.
Days later, Fox offered the family payment covering wages and benefits, funeral expenses and an additional sum approximating life-insurance proceeds.
During his time in recovery, Hall wrote a book about his experiences
Hall was seen in a wheelchair making his way around the grocery store with a smile on his face
Hall is pictured at home with one of his young daughters as she sketched her father in April’ 21
Fox says the payment exceeded what it was contractually required to provide and was offered ‘as a show of sympathy and goodwill.’
The network argues a document subsequently signed by Kuvshynova’s father released it from legal responsibility, calling the agreement ‘the beginning and the end of the case.’
But the family argues they did not understand what they were signing amid the chaos of Russia’s invasion and the unimaginable grief of losing their daughter.
‘I did not know the extent Fox was at fault,’ Kuvshynova’s father said in a sworn affidavit.
A New York judge has allowed significant portions of the case to proceed to discovery, potentially giving the family’s lawyers access to internal Fox correspondence and other evidence.
Judge Mary V. Rosado said it would be ‘a grave injustice’ to prevent the parents from investigating whether they had been told the truth about their daughter’s death.
Meanwhile, Zakrzewski’s widow Michelle Ross-Stanton is pursuing a separate case in Britain.
NPR reported that an earlier Washington Post story said she was seeking more than $11 million in compensation over allegations that Fox failed to adequately protect and insure her husband.
Hall has three daughters with his wife Alicia Meller, an Australian fashion businesswoman
Hall together with his wife and three daughters are pictured on a family vacation
Hall is pictured on his wedding day in 2015 alongside wife Alicia Meller. The two share three kids
Fox continues to deny responsibility for the tragedy.
Kuvshynova’s parents insist their fight is about far more than money.
‘Fox treated us shamefully because they didn’t consider us and didn’t respect us,’ her mother, Iryna Mamaysur, told NPR.
‘This world has lost Oleksandra Kuvshynova – a musician, a poet, an athlete, a photographer and the best daughter. It lost my love.’
