NPR published a long investigation Sunday morning, Oct. 4, into the Russian strike that killed Fox News videographer Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian producer Oleksandra "Sasha" Kuvshynova outside Kyiv on March 14, 2022. Fox correspondent Benjamin Hall survived, but he lost his right leg below the knee, most of his left foot and part of one eye. In interviews with NPR, two security advisers who worked for Fox in Ukraine said the network and Hall ignored repeated warnings to stay inside the city, and Kuvshynova's parents spoke publicly together for the first time. Kuvshynova's parents are suing Fox and Hall in New York, Zakrzewski's widow is suing Fox in London, and Fox says the claims are inaccurate.

1. The Advisers Said Stay Put, and the Crew Went Anyway

The advisers, the parents and their lawyer say everyone knew the danger and the warnings were specific. They say Fox then buried what happened.

The area was a declared no-go zone the day before. On March 13, Russian fire killed American documentarian Brent Renaud near Irpin, and the town's mayor told journalists to stay out. Shane Thomson, a security contractor hired through the firm SEPAR to work for Fox, says in court filings that the crew's nightly planning call that evening set one rule: stay inside Kyiv. He had already pulled back under mortar fire on the road toward Irpin two days earlier. "There was no way we were going there. No way," he told NPR.

Hall shrugged off a warning before he even reached Kyiv. Aaron King, another Fox security adviser, says he asked Hall what he would achieve there that other teams hadn't. He says Hall "kind of shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Ah, I'll go anyway'." Phil Ittner, a former Fox international producer, said in a sworn affidavit that Hall "was addicted to the adrenaline rush of taking risks" and that he worried Hall put career promotion ahead of his crew's safety. A third adviser, Duncan "Jock" Gordon, was with the team that morning. The crew switched to the soldiers' smaller car, which had only three seats. The lawsuit says Hall chose to leave Gordon behind and take Kuvshynova. A court filing says Gordon had told Hall not to go anywhere the security team hadn't vetted.

The network wanted dramatic pictures. Thomson says the network wanted "the atmospherics," meaning smoke over the city with gunfire and explosions in the background. Stephen Humphreys, the lawyer for Kuvshynova's parents and for Thomson, calls it "a very avoidable danger that they were specifically warned about."

Then Fox got a grieving father to sign away his claims. Three days after Sasha died, a Fox human-resources executive offered her father a payment covering her wages, funeral costs and a sum meant to stand in for life insurance. Andriy Kuvshynov signed the release two weeks after her death, with no lawyer. He says nobody at Fox told him about the search for his daughter or any investigation. "Fox treated us shamefully," her mother, Iryna Mamaysur, told NPR. Thomson says SEPAR fired him months later without explanation. He says Fox employees then spread a story that he had been drinking in Kyiv. He denies it.

2. But Hall Says the Plan Was to Stay in Kyiv

Fox and Hall say the team meant to stay in the city and that Hall misjudged the danger but didn't lie. They say the signed release ends the case.

The crew set out to film trenches inside Kyiv, Hall says. In his memoir and a sworn court declaration, Hall says the team's "explicit intention was to avoid the front lines" and report only on defenses inside Kyiv. He says the soldiers at the trenches wouldn't let the crew film. "I tried to negotiate with the soldiers through Sasha, but they were adamant," he wrote. He says the Ukrainian soldiers escorting them then suggested going on to Horenka, a destroyed village where they had taken a New York Times crew the day before. He also says it was Zakrzewski, not Hall, who was supposed to raise security concerns with Fox that day.

Hall got the danger wrong but didn't lie, Fox says. His book put Russian forces at least 30 miles away. The lawsuit says the crew was within a mile of them. Fox's court filings concede the error but say Hall "believed it was safer than it actually was." That is Fox's answer to the charge that he lied.

Safety came first, Fox says. The network says it will "respectfully defend against the inaccurate claims within this lawsuit," and that "the safety of our journalists has always been our number one priority." On the widow's suit, it said it "did everything humanly possible in the aftermath of this unprecedented tragedy amid the chaos of a war zone." Fox declined NPR's interview requests, citing the litigation, and did not make Hall available.

The signed release ends the case, Fox argues. "The valid contract is the beginning and the end of the case," its lawyers wrote. Fox also argues Ukrainian law can't reach executives in New York, partly because a key element of that law didn't exist until a year after the strike. As for Ittner, Fox says in its filings that he has no knowledge of events in Ukraine because the network had forced him out three years earlier.

3. Still, Someone Has to Carry the Risk

Press-safety veterans say nobody can make war coverage safe. Fixer advocates say local hires like Kuvshynova face the most danger and get the least protection.

Nobody gets war footage without getting close to the fighting. Jon Williams ran international coverage at the BBC and ABC News and now heads the Rory Peck Trust, which supports freelance journalists in dangerous places. He says there's "a compelling reason to try and get the images." The year Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova died, at least 67 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide, and more of them died in Ukraine than anywhere else.

Managers have to pull crews who get too comfortable. Williams says that when crews stop recognizing the risks they face, "it's time to take them out." He says nobody can eliminate the danger of combat reporting. NPR notes that shortly after the Fox attack, a CNN crew led by Ben Wedeman was nearly hit filming in Bucha, and that outlets have put far more emphasis on safety and hostile-environment training in recent decades.

Fixers carry the same risk with less protection. Kuvshynova was a local fixer, and Fox did not treat her as a full-time employee. Durham University's Tim Luckhurst wrote in The Conversation days after her death that fixers in some cases work without the hazardous-environment training and insurance that foreign reporters get. He quoted a description of them as holding "one of the lowest ranks in the hierarchy of international news." Kateryna Dyachuk, who heads the free-speech monitoring department at Ukraine's Institute of Mass Information, says foreign outlets should "treat Ukrainian fixers more responsibly, because they risk no less than foreign journalists."

Where This Lands

The advisers say the rule the night before was plain: don't leave Kyiv. The parents say Fox then got a grieving father to sign a release, and Thomson says Fox blamed the security man who had said no. Fox and Hall say the team set out to stay in the city and the soldiers suggested going on. They say Hall's mistake about the danger was honest, and the signed release bars the suit. Press-safety veterans say nobody gets war footage without risk, and the people in charge have to pull crews who stop seeing that risk. In December 2025, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Mary V. Rosado let the parents' case proceed to discovery, writing that enforcing the release now "would result in a grave injustice." Fox is appealing.

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