Fox News host Greg Gutfeld’s mother-in-law flees Ukraine as network under fire for invasion coverage

Millions of Ukrainians are still in hiding as Russia continues to launch military strikes at cities

Fox News anchor Greg Gutfeld's mother-in-law is one of the more than one million people who have fled Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion.

He revealed the moment his wife, Elena, found her mother after she crossed the border from Ukraine to Poland.

The pair had a tearful reunion in Warsaw.

“Just to let everybody know my mother-in-law crossed into … Poland about half an hour ago, so she’s in a car on her way to Warsaw to see her daughter, Elena,” Mr Gutfeld, co-host of "The Five," said during a segment.

He played a clip of the reunion, which showed his wife, Elena, hugging her mother near the Renaissance Hotel in Warsaw.

"Thank God," Ms Gutfeld says in Russia as she hugs her mother.

When she was asked what it was like waiting for her mother to escape Ukraine, Ms Gutfeld it was "awful."

"It was absolutely awful," she said. "But I'm so happy to have her here."

Last week Mr Gutfeld discussed how his Fox News colleagues on the ground in Ukraine were assisting his mother-in-law escape the country.

“These guys over there I won’t name them, but you probably know who they are, and you’ve seen them, are absolute heroes helping out a little old lady, you know, they just met. And maybe by tomorrow or in the next day she’s going to be with her daughter and it’s because of those guys that work for Fox News,” he said.

He called them "unbelievably awesome" and “heroes” for helping a "grouchy, cynical bastard like myself."

While the evacuation of Mr Gutfeld’s mother is an undoubtedly cause for celebration for him and his family, the network he works for has taken a beating on social media after some of its highest profile personalities have used the war to further their own political agendas, or, in the case of Tucker Carlson, outright support Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Carlson complained that Ukraine was not a democracy, and said that was rooting for Russia during a segment on the network. Laura Ingraham, another top name at the network, gave former President Donald Trump airtime to blame the war on his election loss. He claimed that had he been in office Mr Putin would not have invaded, and that Joe Biden’s handling of the Afghanistan pull-out - something Mr Trump vowed to do but failed to accomplish during his time in office - made the US appear “weak.”

Will Cain, another Fox News presenter who filled in for Mr Carlson, recently aired an entire segment focused on how Americans can’t trust the news coming out about the war in Ukraine. He cited notable instances of stories that were later proven false - specifically the “Ghost of Kyiv” fighter pilot that turned out to be a video game simulation and the Snake Island guards who were believed killed but later were found to be alive - as reasons to doubt the reporting. And while those instances of incorrect reports were true, it is also true that those reports, when found to be false, were corrected by news organisations.

Further, he tried to paint anti-Trump Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger as a warmonger, pointing out that he “endorsed a proposal to kill Vladimir Putin.”

What Mr Cain did not mention was that the “proposal” came from Trump apologist Senator Lindsey Graham. There was no condemnation from Mr Cain toward Mr Graham during the segment.

Despite his colleague’s treatment of the war, Mr Gutfeld noted that his mother-in-law was one of the lucky people who have been able to leave the country. Some Ukrainians are pinned down in their homes, particularly in cities like Kharkov - where Russian forces have taken over - and Mariupol, which is currently under siege.

Ukrainian and Russian officials met last week to negotiate ceasefire agreements in certain regions to allow for safe evacuation corridors for Ukrainian citizens, but those talks have largely collapsed, leaving many without a safe route out of the country.

The governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, posted a Facebook message explaining that the “evacuation convoy with local residents was never able to leave Mariupol today: the Russians began to regroup their forces and heavy shelling of the city. It is extremely dangerous to evacuate people in such conditions.”

On Sunday, a Russian military attack reportedly hit an evacuation crossing point in Kyiv, killing an entire family, including two children and several other civilians.

The inability for Ukrainians to flee has resulted in some facing food and medicine shortages or suffering from infrastructure failures, leaving them in the dark and in the cold.