How to help Ukraine: Superhumans Center and rehabilitation of those affected by war (Patreon)

Dear Kyiv Independent community members, 

Thank you for your continued support. Earlier this year, we launched a new membership benefit: the “How to help Ukraine” newsletter. We send one edition per month, highlighting an organization supporting Ukraine and giving you a closer look at civil society in Ukraine. We have heard from our members that there’s interest in getting more involved in helping Ukraine, so we will share with you opportunities to donate or, in some cases, volunteer. 

This is our fifth edition of the “How to help Ukraine” newsletter, and we’re proud to be able to feature Superhumans Center, a state-of-the-art center designed to treat war trauma in military personnel and civilians, providing them with prosthetics, reconstructive surgery, physical rehabilitation, and psychological support. 

Superhumans is currently raising money for their targeted evacuation program. The program works to quickly evacuate soldiers with injured limbs from the front lines to the Superhumans Center in Lviv, so that they can receive specialized treatment or more sophisticated surgeries increasing the likelihood of saving their limbs. Their targeted evacuation program began last November and has already transported over 130 patients to the Superhumans Center. The program costs about $240,000 to run each year, with each evacuation of a soldier from the front lines to Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, costing about $700-$1,000. You can make a contribution to Superhumans’ targeted evacuation program here. 

The moment of arrival of one of the ambulances used to evacuate the wounded to Superhumans Center in Lviv, Ukraine.

One of two Superhumans evacuation teams after transporting a wounded soldier as part of a targeted evacuation program.

Superhumans opened a modern war trauma center to treat both military personnel and civilians in Lviv in April 2023. The center was founded by Ukrainian businessman Andriy Stavnitser, and his colleagues Olga Rudnieva and Philip Grushko, with the mission to restore the physical health and psychological well-being of those injured by the war and help them live their lives fully again. 

From the beginning, Superhumans Center provided prosthetic limbs, maintenance services for the prostheses, as well as physical rehabilitation. In February 2024, the center also added a reconstructive surgery department, where surgeons can perform operations to not only repair wounded limbs, but also faces and ears, including repairing hearing loss. They also have a 3D laboratory, printing sleeves for prostheses and anatomical models that allow surgeons to better prepare for an operation. 

Superhumans Center has already fitted more than 1,440 patients with prostheses, manufactured nearly 2,000 limbs, and helped rehabilitate almost 3,000 people. The center has also completed over 1,700 reconstructive surgeries, with more than 100 of them involving foreign specialists. 

Superhumans has a team of nearly 500 people. It opened a second facility in Dnipro in June 2025, with the third one planned to be opened in Odesa before the end of the year. 

Superhumans is currently raising money for its targeted evacuation program, which rapidly moves wounded soldiers from the front lines to Lviv, so that they can receive more specialized treatments and operations to have a better chance at keeping their limbs. 

Superhumans already has agreements with seven different military units that if one of their soldiers has a wounded limb, which in the opinion of doctors can be saved, Superhumans is notified, and the soldier is immediately evacuated. Targeted evacuation allows wounded soldiers to be transported to Superhumans within only 17 hours after the injury was sustained. The soldiers are usually brought to Lviv on a train, specially designed for evacuating casualties, and in some cases are even transported by helicopter to ensure they receive treatment as quickly as possible. 

At stabilization points or even in hospitals in front-line cities, doctors focus on saving the patient’s life. Often, there is no time to save injured arms or legs. Amputations are rarely performed in ideal conditions, but rather as the situation demands, meaning that a lot of soldiers later have to undergo re-amputation, so that the stump — the part of the limb that remains after amputation — is properly shaped for a prosthetic sleeve. 

However, this can often be avoided by saving the limb — and that’s where Superhumans’ targeted evacuation comes in. Even if the surgeons at Superhumans cannot save the limb, they perform the amputation with future prostheses in mind. 

Since the targeted evacuation program began almost a year ago, 133 soldiers have been brought to Superhumans Center, with 15 of them transported by the two Superhumans medical evacuation teams. 

One of the patients in Superhumans’ targeted evacuation program, Nikita, said that the organization gave him a new life after his injury. 

Nikita was injured on the front line in Donetsk Oblast in December 2024. He was transferred to Lviv within 72 hours. His limb was amputated, but Superhumans Center organized eight months of recovery and rehabilitation programs for him, teaching him to walk again.

Nikita has since returned to service — now training soldiers on the front line. This is one example of what the targeted evacuation program has helped accomplish.

Each evacuation from the front line costs about $700-$1,000. You can make a contribution to Superhumans’ targeted evacuation program here. This link will take you directly to Superhumans’ payment page where you can make a contribution with card, but you can also contribute via wire transfer or cryptocurrency — the details are here.

Thank you for your support — and we hope you find these letters highlighting organizations like Superhumans Center useful. If you have any questions or feedback about our newsletter, please feel free to reach out via email at brooke@kyivindependent.com and let us know what you think of this membership benefit.