In the shadow of Europe’s largest war since World War II, a remarkable healthcare initiative is giving wounded Ukrainian soldiers and civilians new hope.
The Superhumans Centre in Lviv, Ukraine, is revolutionising care for those who have lost limbs, suffered facial trauma, or experienced hearing loss during Russia’s full-scale invasion.
National Security News spoke with Olga Rudneva, Founder and CEO of Superhumans Centre, about the organisation’s critical work, the staggering human cost of the war, and how her own displacement shaped her mission to help others.
From personal loss to national mission
“When the full-scale invasion started, I used to say I had a beautiful life before, I had everything I needed, and I thought it would be forever,” Rudneva reflects. Her own story mirrors Ukraine’s tragedy—born in Donetsk and raised in Crimea, both now under Russian occupation, she later lost her home in Bucha to Russian forces who occupied and destroyed it.
Rudneva found herself abroad on 24 February 2022, having travelled to escort her 73-year-old mother home from vacation in Madeira. When the invasion began, she immediately sought ways to help, first volunteering at a humanitarian hub in Poland.
“We were operating with Andrey at a logistics hub. The main goal was to collect humanitarian aid gathered by people in Europe and help it reach ministries and hospitals in Ukraine,” she explains. Their operation grew to include 300 volunteers.
By April 2022, Rudneva and her colleagues began thinking beyond immediate humanitarian needs. “Andrey came to me saying we need to start thinking about what’s going to be tomorrow. His idea was to create a prosthetics centre because people were going to lose limbs and suffer face trauma. We definitely knew nothing about prosthetics or rehabilitation, but we understood it would be desperately needed in Ukraine.”
With support from Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, who joined their initiative from the beginning, Superhumans located a government-owned facility in Lviv, secured it for 15 years at minimal cost, and began construction in October 2022. The Superhumans Centre opened its doors in April 2023—just one year from concept to operation.
The staggering human cost
The scale of war-related injuries in Ukraine is devastating. Superhumans has already discharged more than 1,500 patients, yet Rudneva describes this as “only a drop in the ocean.”
“We don’t know the exact numbers because they are classified, but the latest update from the Ministry of Health in September 2023 estimated 60,000 people have lost limbs—around 80,000 limbs total because of double and triple amputations,” Rudneva reveals. “For hearing problems due to concussions and battlefield conditions, the estimation is 200,000 people.”
The centre’s surgical department, which opened in February 2024, already has a three-month waiting list. “When you talk about face reconstruction, it’s multi-stage because you can’t fix the face in one surgery. You have to restore function first, then do second, third, fourth separations, and finally in three to four years, you start returning the identity.”
Even soldiers without visible injuries will require care. “Everyone who was at the front lines will need rehabilitation after the war, even if they didn’t sustain any injuries, due to sleeping in cold trenches, carrying around 35kg+ of ammunition, poor nutrition, and constant stress. We’re talking about one million people in the military right now.”
Medical challenges unlike any other war
The Superhumans Centre faces unique challenges treating war wounds in Ukraine. “Multi-trauma is one of our biggest challenges—we’re not only dealing with amputation, but also hearing loss, face trauma, and other issues simultaneously,” Rudneva explains.
“After three years of full-scale war, some stabilisation units in Ukraine are now functioning at the level of fully equipped hospitals. Among the most critical life-saving interventions are early blood transfusion and tourniquet conversion. These measures significantly improve survival rates and outcomes for severely wounded soldiers,” Rudneva added.
Another critical issue is the high rate of complex amputations. “In a normal war situation that the world saw during Iraq or Afghanistan, they had the ‘golden hour of evacuation’—they could helicopter people to hospitals. We cannot do that because Russians target our doctors and medics first.”
Instead, Ukrainian wounded often endure 5–7-hour journeys to reach stabilisation points, resulting in complications from extended tourniquet use, leading to high and multiple amputations.
“Amputations being sustained in Ukraine seem to be much more proximal—meaning less of the limb is saved—than we saw in Afghanistan despite the higher exposure to IEDs there. This seems to be because of the need to have prolonged tourniquet use due to the nature of the battle space in Ukraine and how challenging casualty evacuation is.”
“Blood transfusions at the frontlines save lives but also cause infections. Many interventions happening at field hospitals lead to infection. And mine blast trauma acts differently—you might have an amputation three years ago, then develop neuroma, then bone decay years later because the mine blast trauma shakes your bones and starts destroying them over time.”
Adapting and expanding
The Superhumans Centre is actively expanding its reach. Beyond their Lviv facility, they are building centres in Dnipro (scheduled to open in June) and Odesa. They’ve also developed a direct evacuation system from frontlines to their facility.
“Normally we would see patients after two to three months of trauma, but we realised that’s too late because many had unnecessary or incorrect interventions—some had 15 surgeries that weren’t needed,” Rudneva said. “Now we’re evacuating people directly from the frontline to Superhumans. Our minimum time from injury to arrival was 35 hours, and we were able to save that patient’s limb.”
Despite having only 86 beds, they manage to treat 220 patients simultaneously by coordinating with government hospitals and other facilities. “If patients have had surgical intervention and are stable, we move them to government-owned facilities for rehabilitation, then take another patient. We’re trying to concentrate on surgeries and direct services we can provide efficiently.”
“Close integration between surgical reconstruction and prosthetic rehabilitation is crucial for maximising functional recovery. Both the UK and the US have learned this from past conflicts, and Superhumans follows the same model. A holistic approach that combines physical health, mental health, pain management, and overall well-being ensures the most effective and lasting recovery for wounded warriors and their families,” Rudneva emphasised.
Beyond physical wounds: Addressing mental trauma
The psychological impact of the war extends far beyond those physically wounded. “War impacts everyone’s psychological health, whether you are at the front line or not. Everyone has some kind of trauma—trauma of witnessing, trauma of loss.”
While PTSD rates, among their patients, are currently low at around six per cent, Rudneva cautions this could change: “PTSD can actually show itself two to three years after the trauma.”
What they are seeing more immediately is moral trauma. “Moral trauma is when you do something against your values. You were raised with a certain understanding of what the world is and how it functions, and then one day as a civilian with no military training, you join the military and do what military people do. You start asking yourself: What’s wrong with the world? What’s wrong with me? Is it okay that I did this?”
The centre treats psychological trauma through multiple approaches, including EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), cognitive behavioural therapy for moral trauma, art therapy, and sports activities.
Rudneva notes a stark difference in concerns between Ukrainian and American military personnel: “Most American military personnel were afraid to be killed. When we talk about Ukrainian military personnel, they’re afraid to be wounded and become disabled because they’re not sure whether they’ll be able to function with disability in Ukraine after the war.”
International support and innovation
The centre uses prosthetics from several sources, with about 50 per cent coming from Germany’s Ottobock, a company with 120 years in the market. They also use products from Iceland’s Össur, Polish manufacturers, and Ukrainian companies like Esper Bionics. Costs range from $20,000 to $120,000 for complex upper limb prosthetics with electric hands.
Rudneva is clear about what Ukraine needs most from the international community. She added: “First, we need medical expertise—doctors willing to travel to Ukraine and work in multinational teams. We need highly experienced doctors. Second, we need resources—prosthetics, medications, antibiotics. We need resources to restore our hospitals and to train our specialists.”
The Superhumans Centre operates independently of Ukrainian government funding, relying instead on fundraising efforts and international donations.
A message of resilience
When asked what she wants the world to understand about Ukraine’s situation, Rudneva said: “No one treasures their limbs because we think they’re with us forever. It’s a standard complication; it gives you amazing freedom and privilege to have four limbs. We think it’s normal—it’s not normal, it’s a privilege. That’s what we realise here in war.”
Rudneva continued: “It doesn’t matter how many limbs you have—you can do more having less when you start appreciating whatever is left. All limits are in our head. If you are motivated, if you know your goal, it doesn’t matter how many parts of your body are lost.”
As for Ukraine itself, Rudneva said: “We are a very resilient nation. We are standing against an enemy that is 10 times bigger than we are for three years already, with support that was given to us just enough not to be killed, not to die. We did have support, and we are very thankful, but all this amount of support was just enough not to die, just to resist. We never had enough to win.”
Despite recent concerning shifts in international support, Rudneva remains focused on her mission: “For us as people in this country, we will be here fighting until the last bullet. It’s our country; it’s our freedom. If Russia wins, we will die anyway. I don’t have time to reflect on that or get angry because my energy is needed here at the Superhumans Centre. I have people who need my help and support.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the Lviv-based Superhumans Centre earlier this year, where he met with Ukrainian soldiers undergoing treatment. “We are thankful for advancing this critical field of prosthetics and rehabilitation, for saving our wounded defenders, and all our people affected by Russian aggression,” the president noted, adding that this experience is not only important to scale across Ukraine but “one we can surely share with other countries.”
