Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, an event that just marked its second anniversary, we’ve been documenting efforts to help Ukrainians who’ve lost limbs in the conflict. That number has risen into the range of 50,000, overwhelming the country’s capacity to provide fitting, fabrication, rehabilitation, and other essential services.
Last October, the support effort was bolstered by Levitate, the direct-to-consumer company Amplitude first wrote about back in the fall of 2022. With its emphasis on affordability and consumer empowerment, this amputee-owned company is well suited to meet the short-term demand for devices to get Ukrainians back on their feet quickly. Levitate’s rapid response has included six or seven trips to Ukraine in the last six months, most recently in early February. In that time, the company has provided prosthetic solutions to well over 100 amputees, using the same “test run” model they’ve employed in the United States. (Speaking of which: The company’s US Freedom Tour continues March 9 in Chicago, followed by events in Boston, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Here’s the full schedule and signup info if you’re interested in trying a Levitate prosthesis yourself.)
We spoke with Lasse Madsen, Levitate’s founder and CEO, to learn how the company got involved in Ukraine and how their experience there relates to the company’s broader mission. Learn more about Levitate’s war-relief activities at letslevitate.com. Our conversation is edited for clarity and length.
How did you get connected over there and decide to start doing test runs in that setting?
We are a company that focuses on the active amputee who wants to have a life that is as close as possible to what they had before. When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine happened, a lot of our customers in the United States started to reach out to us and ask, “What are you doing to help the soldiers?” And individuals in Ukraine, and some of the organizations in Ukraine, started to reach out and ask, “How can we work together?”
Levitate works with an organization in Denmark of startups within the tech industry. We had a meeting where we invited the Ukrainian ambassador, several of the ministries, and leading figures within Denmark. And they asked, “Who can solve some issues in Ukraine tomorrow—not a year from now, not two years from now, but tomorrow?” The ambassador said there is estimated to be between 30,000 and 50,000 amputees in Ukraine already—and this was half a year ago—and there is a gigantic need for everything. Prosthetics, training, traditional fabrication, and also new innovations. And this is where some of them found Levitate really interesting, because we’ve been preaching for a very long time that there should be a hybrid model where you get your initial checkups and your first prosthetic done in the traditional clinic, but afterwards you can take care of some of your prosthetic needs yourself. And when you have a country at war with thousands and thousands of amputations, and you look at how many prosthetics they can actually make, they have such a gigantic gap in demand versus supply that they are open to new models.
So we showed him what we’ve been doing in the United States, the test runs we’ve been doing and how we work with end users, prosthetists, and hospitals in the US. And he said, “This is a perfect example of a company that could solve issues tomorrow.”
Tell me about one of your typical visits over there. What happens during a test run, and who attends in addition to the soldiers who’ve lost limbs?
The test runs in Ukraine are very similar to the test runs we’ve done in the United States. They’re for people who have already had their prosthetics for a while. We see individuals who have lost their legs any time from the recent conflict all the way back to the very start, when the first invasion happened in 2014. And we have a ton of prosthetists showing up for the test runs as well, because they’re very eager to learn.
One thing Levitate tries to do with the test runs is to create a sense of community. We have a lot of soldiers who meet each other on test runs, and now they work out and learn together, similar to what we’ve been doing in the United States. We’re creating communities where amputees discuss whatever problems they might have. And then obviously, there is a new aspect that we haven’t seen before, which is soldiers who are fitted with full Levitate systems or individual components who are still actively serving. Most of the people in Ukraine who lose limbs go through the initial shock, and they wonder how they will provide for their families, but a big topic that is filling in the minds of these young guys and girls is: What can I do in order to support my country? In order for them to win, they need people—I’m not talking only about going back to the front with guns, although we do have that. But they are also filling out other gaps. So for instance, they become transporters, or they train new soldiers.
When you do the test runs at take products over, are you only taking running blades? Or are you taking the whole Levitate Unleased system?
We are delivering everything from individual components to entire Levitate Unleashed systems. In some cases we’re working the traditional way, with prosthetists who are just interested in getting products—they want a foot or a blade or adapters or whatever. But we also work with rehabilitation hospitals that are doing everything from surgery to the initial rehabilitation cycle. They make their first prosthetics, and train them in how to use the prosthetics. So we were working with these hospitals to get people moving as fast as possible.
What city have you been working in? Or cities?
We made our initial visit to something called the U+ Center, which is in Lviv. They don’t have their own hospital, but they work with several prosthetic clinics across the country, and we work together with them. We’ve delivered a lot of products to Unbroken, and we have been doing several events with them. Unbroken is very much focused on the sports and activity side of being an amputee, and if we look at who’s losing their legs in Ukraine right now, it’s young men who are approximately my age, and a lot of them were super-active just yesterday as soldiers.
How does the financing work? I know there are a lot of funding sources over there—NGOs, the hospitals themselves, the Ukrainian government, which is getting support from the United States and Europe. How does all of this get paid for?
All the different methods you mentioned are used. Ukraine has a reimbursement system similar to all other countries, where one thing that is not covered is sports equipment. We have the Levitate Forever foot, which is a great hybrid foot prosthesis, so they can get that [and it’s covered]. And then there are different nonprofit organizations, similar to in the US and a lot of other countries, that are working to supply the sports equipment.
Levitate has a price point where we are able to help a lot of people for a small amount of money. We work very closely with physical therapists and prosthetists down there, as well as the patients themselves, and we engage in dialogues with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social Policy. We have 360-degree outlook—what we can do to solve something right here, right now? What can we do to help today? What can we do to help in the medium to long term run? There is a big willingness in Ukraine from everyone to get this to work. The need over there is so big that, no matter what we or anybody else is doing, there’s so much funding needed over the next many, many years.
Do you feel the West as a whole is doing enough? Would you like to see a greater mobilization?
Everybody that goes to Ukraine has a very big potential of helping a lot of people. But as an organization, we cannot ask our employees to go to Ukraine. This is a country at war, and even getting insurance to go to Ukraine is not possible for a lot of people. It has to be within their own wishes, because there is a risk. Right now the front lines are frozen, so the attacks in the cities are scaling up. So one has to go in there with absolute caution. You have to know what you’re doing and where you’re going.
A lot of companies are going to Ukraine and doing a really good job of helping, But what we’re hearing from talking to hundreds of people down there is that things have to be solved along with the Ukrainians. It’s one thing to visit in the short term, but we are trying to figure out what we can do in the medium to long term in Ukraine. That’s what we’re doing with some of the organizations. We’re building more local capacity, supplying them with stocks, training them in different things, so they can do it for themselves over time. We cannot go to Ukraine every day or every month for the next 10 years. But we can build capacities and give them the support and education in order to carry on themselves.
And then the funding is an ongoing need. We are not a nonprofit organization, and the other component manufacturers are also not nonprofit organizations. But there are a lot of nonprofit organizations that are doing a lot to help. So if people want to support the mission we’re doing or the mission that somebody else is doing, funding is needed now. And it will be needed for the next many years. Because now it’s soldiers that are losing limbs, but when the war stops, hopefully soon, we have to consider that Ukraine is one of the most mined countries in the world. So what we’ll see is a shift from soldiers losing legs from stepping on a landmine to civilians losing legs from stepping on landmines. And all the individuals that have lost limbs now, they will need prosthetics for the next 60 years.
What can American amputees learn from the situation that’s happening in Ukraine?
The more we educate amputees, and the more they start to educate themselves, the more empowered they are as individuals. People want to be able to solve their own problems as much as they can, without having to be dependent on a clinic.
This is the reason why I started Levitate, and it’s still my guiding star today. I’m trying to create the world that I want to live in myself. If we look at some of the things that are happening across several countries, the average age of prosthetists is very high, the number of prosthetic students that are coming out from universities is declining, and the amount of amputees in the world is growing. It will take a generation for that capacity to catch up. If we just look at Ukraine, you’re not going to train enough prosthetists in a short period of time to be able to handle tens of thousands of new amputees. So having some level of empowered, informed, self-reliant amputees is more critical than ever.