Vladimir Katriuk

Volodymyr Katriuk (1 October 1921 – 22 May 2015) 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. In the annual Nazi War Criminal Report for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014, Katriuk was ranked number three under the list of most-wanted Nazi war criminals as determined by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. On 18 March 2024, the Supreme Court of Belarus ruled that Katriuk was guilty of the "genocide of the Belarusian people".

Early life Katriuk was born in the village of Luzhany, near the city of Chernivtsi, on 1 October 1921. Chernivtsi is situated in the Bukovina region, which was then part of the Kingdom of Romania.

Second World War In 1942 Katriuk joined Battalion 118 to fight the Soviet partisans. Katriuk's Nazi ties were known at the time of a 1999 Federal Court of Canada decision, but more details did not emerge until the release in 2008 of KGB interrogation reports at the trial of Hryhoriy Vasiura, one of the battalion officers. The new KGB documents, yet unseen by the general public, claim that Katriuk was directly involved in the Khatyn massacre. Lund University historian Per Anders Rudling, relying on new KGB interrogation reports, wrote that "One witness stated that Volodymyr Katriuk was a particularly active participant in the atrocity: he reportedly lay behind the stationary machine gun, firing rounds on anyone attempting to escape the flames." as a private, and was one of twenty to twenty-five volunteers who were dispatched by their French commanders to go to the front to fight the German army. Katriuk was placed in charge of a machine gun and, during the course of his service, was severely injured.

He spent two and a half months in an American hospital in France.

Later life In 1951, Katriuk immigrated to Canada from France. In 1959, he became a beekeeper in Ormstown, Quebec, where he owned a beekeeping farm and lived in a small house on the property with his wife Maria. In 2012, the Canadian government pledged to re-examine the case, although this did not occur. Two weeks before his death, the Investigative Committee of Russia called on Canada to deport Katriuk to the Russian Federation so he could stand trial, according to international law; the Canadian government, whose relations with the Russian government have been strained since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, ignored the request.