Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall has shared his first updated since he was severely injured in a Russian blast while covering the war in Ukraine last month.
In a tweet on Thursday that’s since been removed, the correspondent shared a photo of himself lying on a hospital bed with an eye patch, noting that despite the numerous injuries he succumbed in the blast, he feels “damn lucky” to be alive.
“To sum it up, 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… but all in all I feel pretty damn lucky to be here – and it is the people who got me here who are amazing!” the British journalist wrote.
Mr Hall, 39, survived the 14 March assault where he and a team of reporters with Fox News were covering Horenka, a region just outside of the capital of Kyiv, when their vehicle was bombed by Russian shelling.
In an additional set of tweets, which have also since been deleted, the 39-year-old father of three took a moment to pay tribute to his other fallen colleagues, who weren’t as lucky as him to get out alive.
The Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian native Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, who was working as a freelance consultant for the network, were in the same vehicle that was struck earlier last month and both died.
“Pierre and I traveled the world together, working was his joy and his joy was infectious,” Mr Hall wrote in the now deleted tweet.
For Ms Kuvshynova, Mr Hall relied on the words of a close friend of the freelancer’s, sharing a video of Ukrainian Member of Parliament Sviatoslav Yurash, who described her “senseless killing” on Fox News.
“She was a person that was full of life,” Ms Yurash said of Kuvshynova in the video. “She wanted the world to see that Ukraine that she was building, be that in journalism, in music, in the work that she has done with filmmakers, with various organizations that tried to make the world better and Ukraine better.”
Mr Zakrzewski’s family and friends memorialised the war reporter during a funeral ceremony held in Foxrock, Dublin, on 29 March.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organisation that maintains a database of journalists who were killed while doing their job, lists seven correspondents who have died in the crossfire while reporting in Ukraine since the onset of Russia’s invasion on 24 February.
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