During the later stages of the Great War, on May 11, 1918, the town was the seat of the Battle of Kaniów, in which the forces of the 2nd Polish Corps and the Polish Legions under Józef Haller de Hallenburg failed to break through the Austro-German lines to the Russian side. During the Second World War, Kaniv was a site of a tragically unsuccessful drop of Soviet paratroopers.