“Ukrainian border guards undress you and touch you everywhere,” Judis, a transgender woman, recalled her struggle to cross the Ukraine border amid the war with Russia.

She recalled how strange hands searched her body and pulled her hair to check if she was wearing a wig. “You can see on their faces they’re wondering ‘what are you?’ like you’re some kind of animal or something,” she told the Guardian.

Even as Judis can legally cross the borders with other women who are being allowed passage to safety, on March 12, she was sent back after border guards determined she was a man.

Hailing from the Luhansk region, which is controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, Judis fled to Kyiv before the Russian forces gained control of her home town.

“As soon as I arrived in a village near the capital, my grandma’s house in Svatove was destroyed by a missile. After I left, I had no money and lived in a basement in a village on the outskirts of Kyiv. One day, a rocket hit about 150 metres from the house I was living in. Since then, I have had nightmares about how my limbs were blown off by a bomb,” she told the international daily.

When Judis arrived at the borders last week, she was stopped by the border guards and taken to a room where she was physically examined. After that, she was stopped from fleeing the war zone.

“Afterwards, one of the guards said, ‘you’re a guy, so get the hell out of here’, and told me I should be grateful they didn’t call the police, even though I have a legally valid document that states I am female,” she told. She was asked to ‘go to the war’.

“I want to be free to do what I want in life. I will try again to cross the border because it’s my right to leave and to live. And I will not remain silent. I will not be held prisoner,” Judis said.

Another 24-year-old trans woman, Alice, from Brovary, a town near Kyiv, had a similar experience. She and her 21-year-old wife were stopped from crossing into Poland.

“They took us to a building near the border crossing. There were three officers in the room. They told us to take off our jackets. They checked our hands, arms, checked my neck to see if I had an Adam’s apple. They touched my breasts. After examining us, border guards told us we were men. We tried to explain our situation but they didn’t care,” she said.

After the imposition of martial law in Ukraine on February 14, all men aged between 18 and 60 were banned from leaving the country. Since then, approximately hundreds of trans people have attempted to cross the border.

Activists and aid workers told the Guardian, “Despite their legal status as women, dozens have been mistreated and pushed back at the borders, with many fearing for their lives in the event that Russia’s transphobic regime takes over.”

“Martial law says all males are obliged to serve in the military, so they can’t leave the country,” Olena Shevchenko, 39, a human rights defender said.

“Technically, the law applies to trans people as well, including both certified trans men and trans women who had not changed their documents. But it sounds like Ukrainian border guards are preventing even trans people with a valid certificate reflecting their new gender from leaving Ukraine, and nobody knows why,” Shevchenko said.