RUSSIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1918, Page 5

RUSSIA.

GREATEST CRISIS APPROACHING. UKRAINE REVOLT GROWING. IMPORTANCE OF C'-ZEt'llO-SLOVAK MOVEMENT. London, July 8. Washijgton newspapers give prominence to the week-end reports of a sensational series of events in Russia. It is believed a great crisis is rapidly approaching. Petrograd reports indicate that the Ukraine revolt is growing. The bourgeoisie are alarmed because the Germans are withdrawing and refusing to give battle. Only 30,000 troops are available in the Kicff region, and they are urgently demanding reinforcements. It is stated that the peasant troops number 200,000, of whom 75,000 are well equipped and efficiently officered. They are advancing from tlie Fastov railway junction to Kieff, forty miles northcast. Communications between Kielf and Odessa have been cut. The Ukrainian Government has ordered the restitution of lands to their former owners, promising a complete scheme of agrarian reforms. The Tokio correspondent of the Daily' Express reports that, despite the Vladivostock Soviet's elaborate measures to resist the Czecho-Slovaks, the latter, under the young Russian general, Diteric, formerly General Dukhovitch's Chief of Staff, easily dispossessed the Bolsheviks of arms and ammunition. The Czecho-Slovaks in the Far East are cut off from their comrades in western Siberia, but the developments suggest that they will soon jointly control the trans-Siberian railway. The Czechoslovak movement is entirely spontaneous, and may prove a rallying point for the Siberian party of order and may lead to a natural and satisfactory solution of the problem.—Aus. N.Z. Cable Assoc.