Fox News wanted war images in Ukraine - their journalists died

I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday story. Let's go back to an event two years ago in a fancy ballroom in Midtown, Manhattan. It's staged by the media giant Fox. Stars take turns promoting Fox's brands, including Fox News. It's my honor to introduce Mr. Benjamin Hall. Your correspondent Benjamin Hall sets out a rousing mission for the network. From Ukraine to the Middle East, and here at home, the dedicated journalists of Fox News are trying to inform America, even in the most perilous circumstances. Hall knows peril all too well. In March 2022, while in Ukraine covering the war with Russia, the car he was traveling in was blown up. Hall lost a leg, his other foot, and one of his eyes. And so, at this event for hundreds of industry executives, Hall stands on prosthetics in a suit that ends just above his knees. These stories they need eyes on the ground. They need a human perspective. They need us to bear witness. Though gravely injured on that day in March 2022, Hall was the lucky one. For people in the car with him, two military escorts and two other journalists were killed. Now, two multi-million dollar lawsuits against the network are blaming Fox News for what happened. One of the lawsuits also places the blame on Star Fox correspondent Benjamin Hall. Today on the Sunday story, David Fokenflick brings us his investigation into what went catastrophically wrong on the outskirts of Kiev. We'll be right back. We're back with the Sunday story. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I'm handing things off to NPR's David Fokenflick, who brings us this exclusive story about a fatal assignment in covering the war in Ukraine. A warning, the following material involves graphic language about injury and death. It also contains a mention of suicide. Here's David Fokenflick. Fox News gets accused of a lot of things in headlines and in court. Typically, those accusations have to do with its right-wing ideology, the political agenda of its founder, Rupert Murdoch, and its pursuit of profits. In the story I'm about to tell you, the questions are different. They center on whether the network did enough to keep its own journalist safe while covering combat and whether Fox gave one of its star correspondence free reign to ignore warnings as he sought to get images of Russia's bloody invasion of Ukraine. The correspondence name is Benjamin Hall. Hall was known throughout his career for taking risks in pursuit of a story, but he'd also been accused of going too far, such allegations resurfaced in Ukraine. Aaron King was one of Hall's colleagues at the time. King was a high-risk security adviser for Fox in Ukraine, meaning he was paid to keep people safe. Fox did not comment for this story, and it did not make Benjamin Hall available to offer his side of matters. In order to report on it, I conducted 15 interviews, reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents and hours of television coverage. I also paid close attention to Hall's own words. He appeared on TV of course, but he also presented his story in a Fox documentary and in his own memoir. Both came out in March 2023, a year after the fatal incident. So what is Benjamin Hall's story? Benjamin Hall comes from a globe-trotting family with roots in Britain, the US, and the Philippines. During World War II, Japanese forces in the Philippines imprisoned his grandfather and executed his grandmother and other relatives. US troops rescued Hall's father just a boy during the fighting there. In his 20s, Hall wrote freelance articles from hotspots around the world. Here Hall is reading from his memoir, titled "Saved." I saw a lot of death, had guns pressed against my head, dreamed horrific dreams, all of it an echo of what my father endured in Manila. Hall says in his memoir that the first time he saw a man dying was in 2011, during a period of intense fighting in Libya. Hall writes he was confronted with a choice, should he invade the dignity of the man's last moments. I didn't have the time to consider all the moral angles. I could either keep filming or stop filming, and I chose to keep filming. When I met Benji, he was a freelancer. This is Hall's wife, Alicia Meller, from Sacrifice and Survival, a Fox News documentary about her husband. I knew he did dangerous things occasionally or a lot, but it didn't really matter. He loved what he did. At Hall kept doing it in Iraq, Somalia, Syria, he is a man with previous for-zone experience all around the world. Here's Fox foreign correspondent, Trey Yinx, speaking about his admiration for Hall on Fox News Radio. His reporting in Syria, before he even started at Fox, was the gold standard. And yet, there had been at least one red flag. King Hall's freelance days, a Fox News producer filed a formal complaint, saying Hall had endangered colleagues to further his own career. The producer, Phil Itiner, later set out his allegations in a sworn affidavit reviewed by NPR. He accused Hall of being, quote, "addicted the adrenaline rush of taking risks." And a legend that Hall took what Itiner called, quote, "adlib, unplanned, and reckless actions without proper intelligence and vetting to chase a story." He alleged that Hall "pumped up stories, in hopes of becoming a host for Fox in New York." Itiner urged Fox to pull Hall, saying he was unfit to report for the network. In the affidavit, Itiner said he never heard back about his complaint. In 2015, Hall joined Fox News full-time as a London-based foreign correspondent and he married Melon. Then, in late 2021, they moved to Washington, D.C. Hall would cover the U.S. State Department, it was to be a more stable and safer role. That new path lasted just four months. On February 24, 2022, Ukraine came under attack. Russia began a full-scale military assault. Hall got the call from a Fox executive. Will you go Ukraine to cover the war? By this time, Hall and Melor had three daughters together. I understood my obligations to Alicia and my family and I knew I had to stop putting myself in dangerous situations. And yet, he didn't blink. Just four days after the Russians invaded, Hall arrived in the Ukrainian city of Laviv, several hundred miles west of the major action. Hall started hosting a show that aired nightly on Fox, reporting on them rising tensions. "It is a difficult moment in this war between Russia and Ukraine, and we will see. " Very quickly, news executives asked, "Could he go to Kiev?" Fox had pulled most of its journalists from the capital city because of mounting danger. Hall writes that his wife urged him not to go. Hall assured her he'd be fine. Fox did have a team of high-risk security contractors to keep its journalists safe. Such security advisors are typically ex-military. They provide guidance, muscle, and medical aid. They can also serve as a break on journalists who put their hunger for a story ahead of their own well-being. This can create tension. Aaron King was one of those Fox high-risk advisors. He says that, like Hall's wife, and like another Fox safety contractor, he told Hall not to go to Kiev. "It wasn't in his best interest to go down there, and I asked him what he believed that he would achieve, that other teams haven't already achieved at this point in time." King says it was like all battle zone assignments, balancing the risks versus the possible reward. "I kind of processed what I'd spoken to him about for about 10 seconds, kind of shrugged these shoulders and said, 'I'll go anyway.' And then that was the last I've seen of Benjamin." There were some risks involved, but that's where the story was, and that's where we went. This is Hall speaking about his decision in that 2023 Fox documentary about his ordeal. In his memoir, Hall puts it like this, "It was in a way the culmination of all that I had worked on and all the risks I'd taken before. It was the big one, the wall that might change the world, change the course of history. This was who I was and what I had prepared to do." The big one, the reporter's big story, the surfer's wave of a lifetime, but also the gambler's million dollar roll. Hall couldn't resist. So off he went to Kiev. This is The Sunday Story, I'm NPR Media correspondent David Fulkenflick. I'll be right back. I'm David Fulkenflick, you're listening to The Sunday Story and my reporting on what went terribly wrong for a Fox News team in Ukraine. So let's pull back for a moment to consider the state of play. Fox News wants to get its rising star close to the action. That rising star believes this story is the big one, the one that might change the course of history. But the network's train security advisors warn that the risks might be too great. So who makes the decision to go and on what grounds? for Fox as for all. television news networks, the practical imperative is clear. Well, inevitably you've got to try and get the pictures. This is veteran broadcast news executive John Williams. He oversaw international coverage of both the BBC and ABC news. Williams says television is all about bringing action to life. What's happening on the streets of Teran or on in Dubai or in in Doha, when you can see buildings going up in flames. You have the images you can tell the story. Getting such footage comes with risk, especially in a war zone in 2022 alone the year of this incident. 28 journalists were killed in conflict zones around the world, according to UNESCO. But Benjamin Hall, he was accustomed to risk and he wanted images for his stories. Benjamin Hall arrived in Kiev on March 2nd. The war was still in its infancy. Peer Zakshevsky was already there. Zakshevsky was a cracker Jack visual journalist and producer. Big-hearted, mischievous, easily recognized across the globe with a trademark salt and pepper walrus mustache. Sasha Kushnovo was also there. She was young just 24, new to the job into Fox. She'd been with the network less than two months. She was what's known as a fixer. An independent contractor who spoke the language knew her way around. For Fox, she served as a reporter, historian and all-round troubleshooter, working sources and scouting possible sites and scenes to film. When she returned from outings, she sent her parents reassuring video texts, like this one, recounted by her mother Irina Mameysova. She said, "Mom, don't worry. We have secured young people who are very experienced." In another, she jokes about keeping stylish under all the protective gear. I'm a very fashionable lady and I make our team look good. Sasha Kushnovo was ambitious. Growing up parents and friends say Kushnovo had an unquenchable thirst for life. More learning, more photos, more travel, cooking, music, more of all of it. Her ambition now was to help Fox tell her nation's story to the world. Kushnovo's father, Andri Kushnovo, says he was proud to see her career taking shape. I will tell you that I was very glad. I thought they're getting into such a level of a global, vital company, fascinating material, interesting people. Her mother saw a calling. Journalists reflect the truth for the people. The Fox team, including Benjamin Hall, Pierre Shoshefsky and Sasha Kushnovo, stayed at the intercontinental hotel in the city's historic district, known as Old Keeve. Their plan was to get Fox what it wanted. More footage, more images of the ravages of war. Russian forces were close. They'd been actively attacking the suburbs just to the northwest of the city limits. Fox News high-risk security adviser Shane Thompson had gotten near that area. On March 12th, Thompson went out with Fox correspondent Trey Yankst. Thompson says they needed to Ukrainian checkpoint in the northwest suburbs. He says for a time they felt semi-safe and then suddenly they didn't. The trigger point for me was close fire. So we had mortars coming over. We took cover and then we evacuated back. Kushnovo had written about the same area a week earlier in a Facebook post. March 5th, 2022. Currently, there's a former highway, Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel Makarev, and the north of Wenzhara district remained the most dangerous in the Keeve region. Despite the dangers, a number of Fox's TV competitors had already aired dramatic footage from Irpin, one of those suburbs to the northwest. It showed civilians trying to flee across a river beneath a burned out bridge. Thompson says he understood why Fox wanted those images too to convey the dangers and the stakes. Just behind them, they've got a shot of a situation in smoke. They can eat pumpkin air explosions. They wanted the atmospheric at the time. But the risks were real. Dale Sutton is a former British Army paratrooper serving with Ukrainian troops in those suburbs at the time. And he tells me he told the Fox security advisers to steer the journalist clear. He describes for me here what it was like on the ground. This is an absolute no-go area. It's beyond hot. These are the sort of things that we're facing on the ground. And you've got no visitors in here. Beyond hot, no business being here. That was Sutton's warning. Thompson says that on the night of March 12th, the team met for what they call evening prayers. That's British military slang for their nightly planning session. Senior producers from London and Jerusalem typically took part. So did network executives in New York. Thompson says he vetoed a proposed trip to Irpin. Furthermore, he alleges that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott participated in that call. Did she offer any guidance or directives about where they should go? Fox lawyers say Thompson has no evidence that she did. On March 13th, things escalated. Russian troops fanned out in the Northwest suburbs. And past a checkpoint in Irpin, they shot dead in the American documentary filmmaker and injured his colleague. In response, the mayor of Irpin publicly banned journalists don't come, he said. Stay out that night at evening prayers. Thompson says the message was clear. Stay inside the city limits of Kiev. Irpin and the nearby suburbs were out of bounds. There's no way we were going there. No way, not after the credible. It in tell what we are. And everything what we had before it was all on point. There's nothing. There's no gray areas. No gray areas do not go beyond Kiev. We don't know precisely how the assignment pursued on March 14th, 2022 came about. What we do know is that some time around midday in Kiev, Benjamin Hall, Pierszhevsky, Sasha Kushnova, and a Fox security advisor named Jack Gordon, got into a white van at the hotel. They were hoping to get footage just inside the boundary of Kiev where Ukrainian defense forces were building a perimeter line. They were escorted by two Ukrainian soldiers in a separate car. The Fox teams set out toward the outskirts of Kiev along the MO7 highway. It bends towards Irpin and other suburbs to the northwest, a bit like an elbow. The team made it to the perimeter, but as Hall says in the Fox documentary, we got to the trenches. And they wouldn't let us film that, but maybe they didn't have to go back empty handed. The two Ukrainian soldiers we were with said, well, if you like, we can film some of the abandoned villages that are just around the corner. And they want us to go in a smaller car than our big white van. The van had the word press and big letters on its hood and sides, more likely to draw Russian attention. So it was decided that they'd go in the two soldiers smaller car. That car couldn't fit the whole team. There were only three seats available. This is Dragan Petrovich, the London bureau chief who helped oversee Fox's Ukraine coverage. He's speaking in the documentary as well. The decision was made on the ground by the team. It was more important to have somebody smoke Ukrainian, to have Sasha go with them driving the junk. So to underscore what he's saying, "Jock Gordon, the person charged with ensuring the team's safety, it's security and medical care, he'd be left behind. In favor of Kushnova, their 24-year-old fixer who'd worked for Fox for just two months, she was the only one who could speak in Ukrainian to the soldiers. Without Gordon, the Fox News team set off toward an abandoned area beyond the perimeter, an area that Fox security advisers alleged the team had been repeatedly warned not to visit. In his memoir, Hall says they anticipated it would be empty. The Russian forces we understood would be at least 30 miles away and not pushing in our direction. Let's pause for a moment to consider this point. Hall says they understood the Russians would be at least 30 miles away. In court filings, Fox says that claim of 30 miles away is just what Benjamin Hall believed. And what the Ukrainian escorts believed, they were wrong, Fox says, tragically wrong. But don't forget, Russian troops had just killed a documentary maker in Irpin. The mayor of Irpin had banned journalists for their own safety. And Dale Sutton, embedded with Ukrainian troops nearby, says he had warned it was beyond hot. Even Fox's own advisers say they had repeatedly warned their colleagues to stay within the city. Thompson says Jock Gordon warned them right there at the checkpoint to go no further. Gordon hasn't responded to my efforts to get comment from him. Exactly how far the Fox team ventured beyond key city limits is a point of contention. Thompson says they spent about an hour in abandoned villages northwest of the city. They got footage of destruction, even recorded some promotional spots, according to Zheshivsky's widow in the Fox documentary. Finally, the team turned around to head back to Kiev. Then the attack. It came on a stretch of road close to Irpin near some light industrial warehouses, including an auto body shop. The first missile came out of nowhere. And about 30 feet in front of us. This is Hall speaking with Fox's Sean Hannity a year after the incident. Call got stuck. We couldn't go back and Pierre shouted. Get out of the car. I won't get out of the car. And the next second, the second bomb hits right in front of the left of the car. Hall says besides Zheshivsky, he also heard that disembodied voice of one of his young daughters, urging him to get out of the car. Here's Hall from the Fox documentary. - And I wake up, first thing I knew I was in trouble, I was on fire and I had to stop that. So I'm rolling around and I'm hitting my legs. I'm trying to get it out. And I'm looking at myself and I'm bleeding from the head. My leg is off, it's dangling off below the knee. My first thing I hear is a pierce saying, don't move, don't move. Russian drones. - Hall by his account dragged himself toward a nearby vehicle and a soldier with Ukrainian special forces got out and pulled him to safety. Pierza Shefsky bled to death at the scene. Sasha Kufsnova and the two soldiers never made it out of the car. That afternoon, with no trace of the team, Shane Thompson and Jack Gordon began their desperate search to find them. They checked with Ukrainian military and civil authorities, hospitals, morgues, journalists and security advisors for competing news outlets pitched in too. Finally Thompson says, a doctor called. He asked whether one of the missing was British, his patient was severely wounded and had a UK passport. - So I went straight down there, I identified it was Benji. Benji was a critical condition at the time. It was unconsciously. He had his right leg below the leg, the knee missing. He had a nasty chest, throat and face injury. He had injuries to his hand, injuries to his wife leg. - Doctors in Kiev had amputated Hall's right leg. He would need far more intensive care and soon. Hall's departure from Ukraine and subsequent medical care required extraordinary measures, worthy of a spy novel. A special rescue squad operating amid curfews, a voyage out of the war zone on the train of the Prime Minister of Poland and a military airlift to Germany, approved by the US Secretary of Defense. Initially, the Fox security team couldn't find Sasha Kushnova and Pierre Gershevsky despite a desperate push. Shane Thompson. - We try to locate the Y-View devices, satellite phones, iPhones and we just couldn't do it. - Then a call finally came in. The bodies of a French Irish national and a Ukrainian were at the morgue, Gershevsky and Kushnova. This is the culmination of all that had come before. The drive to capture the news in images. Two Fox journalists are dead, sore two soldiers. Fox correspondent Benjamin Hall has lost a leg, a foot and an eye. So how did Fox News respond? The news organization had all the resources in the world to do right by their journalists and by those who survived them. What did Fox do for Sasha Kushnova's family? Here's your mother by Reena Mami-Sor. - Fox, don't ask. Postava se hanir. - Fox treated us shamefully. - Because they didn't consider us and didn't respect us. - Fox has not addressed what it did in the days immediately following Sasha Kushnova's death in court papers or in comment for this story. Here's what Fox and its executives didn't do according to Kushnova's parents. They didn't immediately call to tell them what they knew and what they didn't know. They didn't send someone who spoke Ukrainian to serve as an interpreter and guide them through the terrible hours and days that followed. They didn't offer immediate comfort and condolences to demonstrate Sasha Kushnova was a colleague and peer worth caring about. Instead, as Fox was pulling out all the stops to get hall to safety, this is what Kushnova's parents say unfolded for them. When they did not hear from their daughter on the day of the attack, Reena Mami-Sor sent her a series of text messages none were returned. Fox News, the couple say, also did not contact them that day. The next day, they say they got a call from someone on Fox's team in Kiev, urging them to pick up their daughter's belongings. Kushnova's father, under he Kushnova, refused. The man called back, but they say he revealed nothing about what had happened to their daughter. Still, no call from Fox executives. It was Kushnova's boyfriend two days after the attack who brought her parents her suitcase and broke unwelcome news. She had died. Sasha Kushnova, their 24-year-old daughter, their shining light was gone. Under he Kushnova couldn't believe it. He and the boyfriend bundled into a car to retrace the path of the news team. At the perimeter checkpoint, Kushnova says, a Ukrainian post commander confirmed that he had seen the Fox team there and had warned Hall not to go farther. Kushnova's father says they ultimately came upon the site of the attack. Everything there was run, destroyed, that is. Erased from the face of the air. We found nothing, nothing left. Just the remains of burned cars. Kushnova's body was already at the morgue. Her parents identified their daughter there by her clothes, quote, "The body had burned to ashes," according to Andre Kushnova in his affidavit. On the third day after the attack, the Kushnova's say, Fox finally contacted them by email. A Fox News human resource's executive was writing to offer money. The Kushnova's say Fox had not gotten around to hang their daughter at all for her work. The HR executive said Fox would send the family a compensation package to take care of Kushnova's back pay and benefits. Funeral expenses, oh. And she offered an additional cash sum to approximate the life insurance payout for a permanent employee. They offered general words of condolences and then sent us a letter to resolve this problem from their point of view. Fox later called it, quote, "a show of sympathy and goodwill." Kushnova said he figured the network was simply paying standard compensation. He did not, he wrote later in the affidavit, think the payment covered any wrongdoing by Fox. One week later, on March 24th, Fox CEO Suzanne Scott sent a condolence note by email in English and Ukrainian, which NPR is reviewed. Scott said colleagues admired the talent and passion. Sasha Kushnova brought to her journalism. Quote, "There can be no pain greater for a parent than losing a child. I know Sasha was an absolutely exceptional young woman," Scott wrote. She continued, "We will honor Sasha in our work, celebrate her in our thoughts, and remember her in our prayers." Fox News posted a standalone tribute to her on its website, that same day. Exactly two weeks after the deadly attack, under the Kushnova signed the papers agreeing to the compensation package. Yorina Mumsur, still grieving in bed, did not sign. According to the Kushnova's Benjamin Hall called them later, once. The call was awkward and brief. The language barrier proved insurmountable. "Bovin." He cried. "Vin Plakov is so-called "nezrozumilo." He was crying and what he was saying was unclear. And that was the extent of what Fox did for its lean fixer, Sasha Kushnova, her parents say. It took Benjamin Hall months to heal from his severe injuries, eventually with great encouragement from his family and the network, he returned to Fox. In November 2023, Hall made his first trip back to Kiev, televised by Fox. Tonight we have a very special story. Corresponded Benjamin Hall returns to Ukraine. 20 months after he was seriously injured there while covering the war with Russia. Hall was shown walking on his prosthetics, wheeling his bag along the length of a platform at a train station, headed to Kiev from Poland. "First time I got onto this train, I was badly alive, I was badly injured, but we made it out the other side. Today's the day that we're going back." Hall had an exclusive interview with Ukrainian President, and that wasn't all, as Fox host Brian Kilmeet explained to viewers. "Benjamin also received the order of merit from Ukrainian President Zelensky. There he is getting it." The two men were shown shaking hands as Zelensky presented Hall with a medal for his courage. The courage he showed in taking assignments to bring Ukraine's story to the world. Hall also met his Ukrainian rescuers to thank them. Lachlan Murdoch, the chairman of parent company FoxCorp, traveled to Ukraine to be there. The Kushnovs say neither Hall nor Murdoch contacted them during the visit. "Neither man thanked them," the couple says for their daughter's courage, nor explained to them what had happened to her. So the person the Kushnovs say they learned all this from was the man who became their lawyer. In March 2024, two years after the attack, the Kushnovs filed suit against the network and against Hall. They alleged negligence over their daughter's death. They alleged fraud over that compensation package, which Fox says is a binding settlement. High-risk advisor Shane Thompson joined them in lawsuit, alleging Fox wrongly scapegoated him for what had happened. Fox's contractor, SEPAR, had let Shane Thompson go some months after the attack. Thompson and others tell me he struggled with depression since the incident and tried to take his own life. Pierssek Shefsky's widow, Michelle Rostanton, filed her own suit in London. She similarly alleges that Fox failed in its obligation to keep her husband safe. She declined to speak about the specifics of her case. Her suit set an earlier stage and less documentation has become public. Fox News rejects those allegations and is defending itself in court. As I've mentioned, Fox News and Benjamin Hall have declined my request for comment. They are facing lawsuits and accusations of failing to protect the lives of two slain colleagues. And in such a kushnovas case, the allegation that they defrauded her parents. Fox says in court filings this was an unforeseeable outcome in a war zone, a place of deadly risk. Authorities in Ukraine, Ireland and France are conducting a joint investigation into possible war crimes charges against the Russians for the fatal attack. Here's for Fox News also argue the network had no legal duty to tell kushnovas parents the details surrounding her assignment or her death. And here's why. Think back to that compensation package, the one on 30 kushnovs signed two weeks after his daughter was killed. Along with the compensation, it included a wafer, releasing Fox from all liability for the fatal assignment. And it also contained an agreement to keep everything private, just between them. All this remains confidential information and you will not disclose it to anyone. The odds the kushnovs will win their lawsuit in New York state courts appear long. They are up against a media empire. Still the case has survived several moves for dismissal and a judge approved what's called discovery. That allows the legal team for the kushnovs and Thompson to review Fox News's internal correspondence its footage, materials, records and other evidence. In her order, the judge said it would be a grave injustice to deny the kushnovs the ability to investigate whether Fox was telling them the truth. She noted that they were not represented by an attorney when the waver and release were signed. And the judge said the kushnovs were, quote, grieving the loss of a daughter while navigating a calamitous invasion by a large nuclear armed country. Fox has appealed. What happened outside Kiev is unquestionably a tragedy, not what anyone involved wanted. Sasha Kushnov's parents continue to mourn her and mourn everything else she had yet to offer. This world has lost Alexander Kushinova, a musician, a poet, an athlete, a photographer, in a crash. I remember a conversation I had 30 years ago when I was a young reporter at the Baltimore Sun with a then foreign editor, Jeff Price. He was generously ladling out tales from his days abroad. Such anecdotes are typically called war stories, even when they're not about war. These stories were, but then all of a sudden, he paused, say, you know, Dave, dead men tell no tales. What he meant was, no story is worth dying for. You have to live to write another day. Price wasn't saying don't cover war. He was saying make your choices with care when you do. They can change lives in an instant. While it declined comment from my story, Fox News pointed me to a statement released when Sasha Kushinova's parents in Shane Thompson filed their lawsuit in 2024. Quote, while we understand the grief and continue to mourn the loss of both Piershevsky and Sasha Kushinova, we will respectfully defend against the inaccurate claims within this lawsuit, Fox said at the time. The statement continued, quote, "The safety of our journalists has always been our number one priority, and we are immensely grateful to the Fox News journalists who have covered the war in Ukraine, and we remain committed to reporting from the region." That was in Piers Media Correspondent David Fokenflit. This week's episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Sharon Machihi and edited by Jenny Schmidt, Emily Cobb and Sharon Machihi, fact checking by Susie Cummings, and engineering by Anley Huang. Our voiceover artist were Hana Aghimi, Kevin Gilbert, and Palina Lit-Venova. Special thanks to our NPR key bureau colleagues, Palina Lit-Venova, and Hana Palamarinco for reporting and translations for this story. Also thanks to Joanna Kukizis, Tony Kavin, Christian Monroe, Aida Porosad, Ivan Nikolive, and Johannes Durgey. The rest of the Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo. Our supervising senior producer is Leana Simström, and our executive producer is Irene Nuguchi. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and up first we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.