[1] Vasyl Meleshko was born in the settlement of Nyzhni Sirohozy, Taurida (now known as the Kherson Region, Ukraine) in 1917.

On the very first day of the war Meleshko was taken prisoner near the village of Parkhach, when his battalion was surrounded after the enemy's massive attacks on the Red Army positions.

In the autumn of 1942, after receiving special training in Germany, Meleshko was transferred to Kiev for service in the occupation units.

From January 1943 to July 1944, Meleshko and his platoon took part in dozens of pacification actions — including the operations Hornung, Draufgänger, Cottbus, Hermann and Wandsbeck — that were part of the "dead zone" policy of annihilating hundreds of Belarusian villages in order to remove the support base for alleged partisans.

In this and in a number of other operations, the battalion acted in conjunction with the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, located in the district center of Logoisk.

In February 1943, the battalion members, after a heavy fight with partisans, decided to vent anger at residents of the villages of Zarechie and Koteli.

In April 25, 1974, Hryhoriy Spivak, a private of the 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion said "In general, the first company we had was the cruelest and most devoted to the Germans.

"[10][11] On the morning of March 22, 1943, a column of several vehicles with the members of the 118th Battalion staff left Pleshchenitsy for Logoysk.

When trying to jump out of the car, Hans Woellke, the Hauptmann of the auxiliary police and commander of the battalion's first company, was killed.

[12][13] Shortly before the ambush, the battalion members on the road met 50 residents of the village of Kozyri who were cutting down trees in the forest.

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

[14][15] On November 19, 1973, Ostap Knap said, When I arrived at the site of the shooting, there were really a lot of people lying on the road.

Residents of the village of Osovi, in the Dokshitsky district of the Vitebsk region, having learned about the battalion members’ approach, took shelter in the forest.

Together with the 115th Schutzmannschaft Battalion, it was included in the 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS and sent to the west to fight French partisans.

But the service in the Legion, practices in the foreign army with the prosperous [officers'] violence caused me to reconsider my views.

At the end of 1955 he was granted amnesty in accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 17, 1955.

In the 1970s, the collective farm prospered, and a photo of the chief agronomist came to the pages of the regional newspaper Molot.

Survivors of Khatyn and the surrounding villages, as well as Meleshko's former colleagues from the police battalion, were summoned to the court as witnesses.

People in the barn began to shout, asked for mercy, there were screams, a horrible picture, it was terrible to listen to.

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

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

In his testimony, Vasiura characterized his subordinate, saying "That was a gang of bandits, for whom the main thing was to rob and drink.

Take [for example] the platoon commander Meleshko - a Soviet cadre officer and a real sadist, he literally raged with the smell of blood...