Rebuilding Life After Limb Loss: Inside Ukraine’s Superhumans Center
Reading Time: 5 minutes
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Summary:
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Lviv’s Superhumans Center offers prosthetics, reconstructive surgery, and psychological help under one roof.
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CEO Olga Rudneva says it has treated more than 5,000 war survivors since opening in 2023.
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Rudneva says drone warfare has shifted injuries from the lower body to the upper body and head.
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Ruslana Danilkina, who lost her left leg at 19, says the center felt like home.
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Rudneva says the team is also treating frostbite, including fingertip injuries.
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In Lviv, in western Ukraine, a clinic is helping people rebuild their lives after limb loss and other war injuries. Called the Superhumans Center, it brings prosthetics, reconstructive surgery, and psychological help together under one roof. Its patients include soldiers and civilians, adults and children.
The center opened in April 2023, close to the Polish border. Its CEO and co-founder, Olga Rudneva, told Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian that Superhumans has cared for more than 5,000 survivors of war and employs approximately 650 people, including a 26-year-old triple amputee whose job is to test prosthetics until they break.
The idea took shape about a year into the all-out invasion; Rudneva realized that Ukraine would endure profound emotional and physical trauma for years. Her business partner, entrepreneur Andrey Stavnitser, urged her to plan for what came next, and the two set out to build a hospital.
Donations made the plan possible. One donor was Howard Buffett, Warren Buffett’s son and a philanthropist. Rudneva asked Buffett for $1 million in seed funding and was surprised when he gave $16 million. Other high-profile donors include Sting and Trudie Styler and Richard Branson.
From the front line to magazine covers
Ruslana Danilkina was among the first people treated at the center. The Times reports that after graduating from high school, she worked as a waitress and trained to become a tattooist. A surge of patriotism prompted her to enlist, though she thought she would be assigned to admin work in a somewhat safe environment.
After spending a few months in Zaporizhzhia, she requested a transfer nearer to the front, where she became a radio operator. Her work involved reporting casualties, monitoring troop movements, and arranging evacuations. She told the Times that the relentless shelling and night shifts blurred her sense of reality and time.
Then, on February 10, 2023, near the front lines in Kherson, Russian artillery struck her vehicle. She was only 19 when she lost her left leg. In the aftermath, she said she tried to conceal her injury—even from her friends—and felt guilty and ashamed that her life had suddenly become so different.
The years that followed brought a striking change. Now 23, Danilkina has undergone numerous surgeries and worn several prosthetic legs, while building a substantial social media following. She has also come to symbolize Ukrainian resilience, appearing on magazine covers and in fashion editorials.
She told the Times that what she remembers most about arriving at Superhumans was meeting people who used two or even three prostheses. It felt like home, she said, and that was when she knew she wanted to start her new life there.
How the injuries—and the care—are changing
The center’s caseload has shifted along with the war. In the early days, Rudneva said, most patients came in with lower-body injuries because so many people had stepped on mines. Now that fighting has moved from the ground to the sky, upper-body and head injuries are more common. She credited drones with changing the types of injuries the center sees.
Weather adds another challenge. Rudneva said Ukraine is the first country in roughly 50 years to fight a war in cold conditions, and the team is treating frostbite, including injuries to the fingertips.
Looking ahead
Rudneva grew up hearing her grandmother’s stories about the years after World War II: poverty, hunger, and the struggles of people who had lost limbs. She told the Times that Ukrainians today want to ensure that this postwar chapter is different.
Her vision is of people who carry scars rather than open wounds, and who speak openly about what they have endured instead of remaining silent. She said that if Ukrainian children grow up surrounded by people who have passed through the center’s doors, the country’s path will change.
It is a hopeful picture, grounded in a practical condition: a place that brings surgery, prosthetic fitting, and emotional support together, where people with limb loss can meet others further along the road. Danilkina’s account suggests that this second part may matter as much as the first.
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