A front-row seat to history

Reporting on the war in Ukraine can be grim and dangerous work. For this Monitor conflict reporter, the job is both a responsibility and a privilege.

When Dominique Soguel tells her friends and family about her reporting trips to Ukraine, there’s generally only one thing on their minds: her personal safety.

“I tend to try to reassure them,” she says. “With conflict zones, if you watch TV and you see the news, it all looks horrible all the time. And for some it is. There are lots of places where it’s really horrible and grim. But there are also large chunks of what I call seminormality, where people are working or going to school and getting on with life.”

That’s not to say that Dominique takes security lightly. 

As a veteran conflict reporter, she has reported extensively from Syria, Libya, and Iraq. Her first trip to Ukraine came just weeks before Russia’s 2022 invasion. She’s been back four times since. Her reporting frequently brings her near front-line areas. Her dispatch from Sloviansk, featured in the June 10 issue of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly, lays bare the grim business of war, detailing efforts to return fallen soldiers to their families. 

Before each trip, she carefully scours available data about recent troop movements and missile strikes to gain a better understanding of what she is likely to encounter when she arrives. Armed with that intel, she is able to begin her journey with a degree of confidence.

“I always joke, and it’s partially true, that I go to Ukraine to get caught up on sleep,” she says with a grin. “But that’s only a factor of having two small kids.”

While on the ground, she keeps in close contact with the Monitor’s two other key conflict reporters covering the war, Scott Peterson and Howard LaFranchi, as well as her editors. The team works like a hive, talking through story ideas, trading security tips, and keeping tabs on each other via a WhatsApp group whenever any member of the team is in country. That “mini community,” as Dominique refers to it, can be a grounding force.

“It’s mainly for logistical and safety issues,” she says. “But there’s humor peppered in throughout the day. That’s nice because it makes you feel like you’re in touch with your people.”

Moments of levity and camaraderie are important when reporting from a war zone. Risks aside, the work is serious. Dominique is keenly aware that many of the decisions impacting people on the ground are made half a world away.

“From a distance, everything gets very distorted. It becomes good versus evil, or black versus white,” Dominique says. “By being there, you see the many shades of gray, and you try to communicate that complexity, which might help inform the understanding of policymakers or change-makers. You get a chance to show whose lives are actually at stake.”

She feels a responsibility to bear witness, both in the present and for posterity.

“I really have this image of the journalist as historian,” Dominique adds. “Conflict zones are an opportunity to see history from the front row.”