Two More Big Russian Victories

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 66, 22 March 1944, Page 5

Two More Big Russian Victories

BED ARMIES REACH MOUNTAIN BARRIERL LONDON, March 20. Two big Russian victories announced by Marshal Stalin are the capture of the towns of Mogilev Podolsk and Vinnitsa. The former fell yesterday to troops of the Second Ukrainian Army. It is an important railway junction, with one line running west to Cernauti and other rail connections to important enemy centres in the south. The Russian troops are going ahead along a 30mile front, carving up the enemy formations trapped by the swift Soviet surge across the Dniester. It seems that the town of Balti is the next Red Army objective. Prom it a railway line runs back across the Dniester into the Ukraine. If this line is cut, and the Russians are only 28 miles from it, the Germans will have only one railway across the Dniester, and this line is about 100 miles further south. Vinnitsa fell to-day. Mannstein’s troops have been clinging to it foi many weeks but Soviet forces have teen pressing on it from three sides. Marshal Stalin says it was taken by a frontal assault combined with a flank ing movement. Par inside prewar Poland tne Soviet offensive between Dubno and Kamenets is driving forward across marshland and swollen rivers. Beyond Dubno, the Red Army is getting near the town oi Brody, on the highway to Lwow, and below Kamenets the Russians are battering down the German resistance as they move south towards Tarnopol. The fall of the two important towns of Mogilev PodolsK and Vinnitsa indicates the intense pressure of the Russian offensive. The fall of Mogilev Podolsk was not unexpected after the news that fighting was going on in the outskirts of the town, which is 30 miles from Soroki, the capture of which was announced yesterday. Mogilev is a junction for the railway line to Balti —Bessarabian communications centre—and thence to Jassy and the Rumanian pert of Galatz. Further north, Vinnitsa was the counterpart of Tarnopol at a sector where fierce fighting was going on. Vinnitsa was the last remaining enemy stronghold on the Middle Bug. These two big successes not only widen the great salient driven from the Bug to the Dniester, but give Koniev control of one of the three railway bridges across the Dniester —that at Mogilev Podolsk—enabling the Russians to speed up transport enormously. FOOTHILLS REACHED The armies of Koniev and Zhukov have now reached the beginnings of the