Fox Reporter Rescued After Ukraine, Polish Militaries Join Forces with Brave Civilians
Keeping a lid on the details, the founder of the group that helped rescue wounded Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall from Ukraine explained that the simple act of saving the correspondent was part of a delicate and complex secret mission.
Speaking Monday on “America’s Newsroom” on Fox News, Sarah Verardo, co-founder of the group “Save Our Allies,” spoke about the organization’s work.
Hall was wounded near Kyiv in an attack that killed Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova. Hall is currently at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, according to Fox.
His rescue required the cooperation of the Pentagon and Defense Department as well as the Ukraine and Polish militaries, Fox reported.
“This is a very complex situation, but we have people on our team that are willing to go into harm’s way to protect those from evil,” Verardo told “America’s Newsroom” co-host Dana Perino.
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“And especially when we got that call for help from Fox, we could not move quickly enough to mobilize a multinational effort to secure Ben’s extraction from a very dangerous combat zone,” she said.
The March 14 attack has been blamed on Russia, according to CBS. Kyiv has been under almost constant shelling in the past week.
A plaque commemorating camera operator Pierre Zakrzewski and journalist Oleksandra Kuvshinova now stands on our #Journalists_Altar.
A candle burns in their memory and as a prayer for the speedy recovery of @BenjaminHallFNC injured in the same attack on a @FoxNews team near Kyiv. pic.twitter.com/kl2q1dZLvo
— St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street (@stbrideschurch) March 16, 2022
“This is an operation that typically would take months to plan, as well as coordination from multiple government agencies and countries. And our team, led by a gentleman that we will call Seaspray is a special operations and intelligence veteran that is very experienced in precision extraction in hostile environments,” Verardo told Perino.
Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall safely out of Ukraine after suffering serious injurieshttps://t.co/h7C0nb3OnO
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 16, 2022
“And when we got the call from Fox and, of course, my 10-year long relationship with Fox, and we all know how supportive you are to so many different causes, we could not move quickly enough to make sure that Ben, not only his extraction, but he was stabilized through field medicine by our team that is also led by trauma surgeons, experienced in military battlefield trauma, as well as our team of special operations veterans and intelligence community veterans,” she said.
Verardo said that rescuers “moved heaven and earth to move Ben not only quickly out of an active, hostile combat zone, but safely due to the grave condition he was in and his injuries.”
A Russian missile strike reduced a shopping mall in Kyiv to a smoldering ruin, one of the most powerful strikes to rock the center of the Ukrainian capital.
At least eight people were killed in the attack, officials said. But the toll is likely to rise.https://t.co/tLyjaj5qZ6
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 21, 2022
Verardo told Perino she co-founded the group in August with three “amazing friends and special operations veterans” during the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Their goal was “rescuing and protecting and preserving human life, even if our own government would not do it,” she said.
“We felt this moral obligation to our wartime allies and that happened not only in Afghanistan and continues to, but now we’re doing the work with ‘Save Our Allies’ in Ukraine,” she said.
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