1. Volodymyr Katriuk was a Ukrainian-Canadian soldier and beekeeper, who was accused of having taken part in the Khatyn massacre and other massacres under the cover of anti-partisan warfare as a member of the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 during World War II.
On 18 March 2024, the Supreme Court of Belarus ruled that Vladimir Katriuk was guilty of the genocide of the Belarusian people.
Vladimir Katriuk was born in the village of Luzhany, near the city of Chernivtsi, on 1 October 1921.
In 1942 Vladimir Katriuk joined Battalion 118 to fight the Soviet partisans.
The new KGB documents, yet unseen by the general public, claim that Vladimir Katriuk was directly involved in the Khatyn massacre.
Vladimir Katriuk claimed in Federal Court that in August 1944 he defected with the entire battalion and joined the French Resistance to fight the Nazis.
Vladimir Katriuk was placed in charge of a machine gun and, during the course of his service, was severely injured.
Vladimir Katriuk spent two and a half months in an American hospital in France.
Vladimir Katriuk claimed to have fought later at the Italian front near Monaco until the end of World War II.
Vladimir Katriuk remained in the Foreign Legion to avoid repatriation, but soon learned that his unit would be sent to fight in Indochina, to which his commanding officer, whom he had a poor relationship with, said that Katriuk would be unlikely to survive.
Vladimir Katriuk deserted while on leave in July 1945, obtained false identity papers with a new birthday, under the name of his brother-in-law, and got a job in a butcher shop in Paris.
In 1999, a Federal Court of Canada decision concluded that Vladimir Katriuk immigrated to the country under a pseudonym and obtained his Canadian citizenship by providing false information.
However, the court found no evidence that Vladimir Katriuk had participated in war crimes, and in 2007, the cabinet halted revocation proceedings.
Vladimir Katriuk died of a stroke in a hospital in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec on 22 May 2015 at the age of 93.