Behind the Scenes with IMES

Immediate Medical and Evacuation Service (IMES) is the organization that Anna has been working with at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Like HUP, IMES was started at the onset of the Russian invasion. It’s a small, scrappy group that is run by Max Poliakov, a young Ukrainian-German who was living Hamburg until the beginning of the invasion where he worked as a tennis coach and studied. Since the invasion began, he has put his life on hold and has been working around the clock at the Polish border, near Korczowa where he receives items such as food, medicine, and non-lethal aid that he then transports back over the border to Ukraine, bound for some of the hardest hit areas in the East, including Kharkiv and surrounding environs.

Max made this 4 minute video below to explain more about what he’s doing and how it gets done.

Max and Anna