How a transgender Ukrainian man escaped Russia’s invasion: ‘I painted my nails violet and wore Mom’s shirt to look more girly.’

• Andriy woke up in Kyiv, Ukraine, and realized he needed to escape the Russian invasion.
• But as a transgender man, the epic journey was more complicated.
• He’s now safe in Berlin, but he will not be the last to make the journey.

Andriy (not his real name) thought the major change in his life would be his gender transition from female to male. But when the Russian bombs started to fall on Kyiv, Ukraine, he was forced to embark on another journey — from a citizen of Ukraine to a war refugee.

Like the 2 million Ukrainian refugees who woke up one day to the terrifying sound of shelling, Andriy, 19, realized that Putin’s invasion of his homeland meant the end of his life as he knew it.

“It doesn’t matter whether you are trans or not. The war is scary for everybody. I know even strong, big men who are afraid when they hear bombing,” Andriy told Insider.

“I had a nice job, goals, plans, apartment, but I just can’t think about Kyiv under Russia or Putin as our president,” he said. “I didn’t know how I could stay in Kyiv during the war. We haven’t been living. We were surviving — always hiding, checking the news, hearing sirens.” 

As Andriy and his mother took cover in a Kyiv subway station for three nights, he had the first thought of any war refugee: “Where will we live? Where are we going go?”

But as a transgender man — a man assigned female at birth — different questions raced through his mind about leaving his homeland. Andriy is a pseudonym used to protect his identity.

He read the news that all men in Ukraine, ages 18 to 60, were not permitted to leave the country and were obligated to serve in the military.

He told Insider he needed to stay with his mother and care for her. Leaving her to flee Ukraine alone just was not an option. 

Coupled with the dangers that come with being transgender and forced into a military draft in an active warzone, he felt he only had one option. 

Andriy decided to join the river of desperate refugees flowing West but needed help from someone who understood his transgender dilemmas.

“How do I show my passport as a man with a female passport? Will they let me through the border as a man?” he said.

On March 3, he got in touch via Instagram with the London activist and model Rain Dove Dubilewski, who is leading an effort to get trans people (and other vulnerable people, including people who are older or have a disability) out of Ukraine.

Dubilewski has amassed a team of 50 volunteers, including caseworkers, to support people forced to flee.

In the messages between Andriy and Dubilewski, who is also trans, the conversation quickly turned from “hello” to Andriy’s anatomy.

“Have you had top or bottom surgery,” Dubilewski asked. Andriy hadn’t. They also needed to know if Andriy had his old female passport.

Quick-thinking mom saves the day

Dubilewski told Andriy he needed to hide his ID — to tell border enforcement later that he lost it — and go as soon as possible.

The two-day journey to the border with his mom was sleepless and filled with high anxiety, Andriy said. The first stop was the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, as well as its central station of confusion and chaos heaving with mothers and children, foreigners and students just trying to get home, and older and vulnerable people.

After seven hours, they found a place on a train bound for the border with Poland. But first came the dreaded document checks.

“I was so scared. My head was messed up, and I was so tired. Thankfully, Mom told them that we’ve lost all the documents and have only a copy of my female ID. The conductor looked at me closely, asked me to take off my hat, and then she let us on the train,” he said.

They were then on their way to the crossing point Przemysl, Poland, and Andriy had to revert to being a person he was not — a shadow of the person he was before — a painful, gender dysphoria-inducing process. 

“We decided I had to whisper so that nobody would notice my deep voice,” Andriy said. “I even painted my nails violet and wore Mom’s shirt to look more girly.”

Andriy and his mother’s train crawled to safety, and it took 15 hours to travel 50 miles. The carriage was filled with the sound of weeping, and some became angry, he said. Water ran short.

“I was shaking and couldn’t sleep until I crossed the border. But at the border, nobody checked our documents, the train continued moving,” he told Insider. “When we arrived at Przemysl, we had to pass through customs control. It didn’t take even three minutes.

“I’ve never been so happy and exhausted.”

“If the border force saw him as a man, he would have to stay in Ukraine and not care for his mother,” Dubilewski said. “It was very painful for him to dress up as a woman, wear his mother’s makeup, but it would have been more painful to leave her in a foreign country to start her life over.”

The dangers for trans people in Ukraine

Ukraine ranks 39th out of 49 countries for the treatment of LGBTQ rights, according to ILGA-Europe, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex people.

Ukraine’s military call-up affects many trans people.

The organization Transgender Europe has said: “If recruited, trans people face a higher risk of harassment and violence. Access to food banks, shelters, and other essentials often require a valid identity card. Mismatching ID documents can lead to denial of service, besides suspicion of fraud, ridicule, harassment, and violence.”

Dubilewski said: “Ukraine has a lot of really wonderful people, hard-working people, and people who are exceptional during wartime. However, the bias and the prejudice are still there.

“So when you go into a war zone, how do you know that the people next to you want you to live?”

Dubilewski said they had been working tirelessly to get LGBTQ people out of Ukraine. “We’re surprisingly kicking ass, but it’s really, really tough,” they said.

They said their team had a 100% success rate in getting people out of Ukraine who didn’t want to take arms. 

“We can’t help that this transphobia will exist as they go on their journey,” Dubilewski said. “But we promise people that, if they’re brave, and if they trust themselves, and if they trust us and they have the input and they have information for the next steps of their journey. We promise them that there will be people who will help them get out of Ukraine, that they’re not going to be abandoned.”

Andriy and his mother are now safe and living in Berlin.