26 Facts About Vasyl Meleshko

Vasyl Andriyovych Meleshko was a Ukrainian war criminal who participated in the Khatyn massacre.

Vasyl Meleshko was born in the settlement of Nyzhni Sirohozy, Taurida in 1917.

Vasyl Meleshko received a secondary school education after which he graduated from an agricultural technical school, specializing in agronomy.

Vasyl Meleshko was a member of the Komsomol from 1939 on.

Vasyl Meleshko was excluded from army lists as a missing person in September 1941.

Vasyl Meleshko was sent to a prisoners of war concentration camp at Hammelburg.

Vasyl Meleshko joined the 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion composed of former Soviet soldiers and Bukovinians.

Vasyl Meleshko received the rank of Zugfuhrer and became the commander of a platoon of the 118th battalion.

Vasyl Meleshko personally fired on the village with a rifle and gave orders to fire.

Furious at his wound and Woellke's death, Vasyl Meleshko accused the lumberjacks of concealing partisans and ordered them to be escorted to Pleschenitsy.

Vasyl Meleshko then went to the headquarters to call for reinforcements.

Vasyl Meleshko himself shot them at close range with a medium-sized machine gun and finished off the wounded.

The platoon commander Vasyl Meleshko even pushed away one of his subordinate machine gunners and began shooting himself.

In May 1943, Vasyl Meleshko participated in the burning of another village.

Vasyl Meleshko successfully passed Soviet filtration procedures and was restored to his army rank.

Vasyl Meleshko moved far away from the places where he had grown up and came to live in the settlement of Novo-Derkulsky in the region of West Kazakhstan, where he started to practice his pre-war profession as an agronomist and started a family.

Later Vasyl Meleshko decided to move to his wife's relatives in the Rostov region, but on the way there, he was arrested.

Vasyl Meleshko stated that while in Belarus, he was guarding railway communications and participated in military operations against partisans.

Vasyl Meleshko was sentenced to 25 years in prison and 6 years of loss of his rights.

Vasyl Meleshko was serving his sentence in the form of correctional labor in Vorkuta.

Vasyl Meleshko returned to peaceful life on the Kirov farm in the Rostov region.

Vasyl Meleshko had two sons, and his wife, Nikol Meleshko, taught German at a local school.

Vasyl Meleshko became the chief agronomist of a collective farm named after Maxim Gorky.

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, taking into account the exceptional gravity of the crimes committed by Vasyl Meleshko, rejected his petition for a pardon.

The materials of the trial of Vasyl Meleshko helped to reveal information on yet another war criminal, Hyhoriy Vasiura, the battalion's chief of staff, who had led the Khatyn massacre.

Vasyl Meleshko was exposed in 1985, and he was executed in 1987.