UKRAINE THRUST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 August 1941, Page 6

UKRAINE THRUST

FEATURED IN GERMAN PROPAGANDA POSITION APPARENTLY CRITICAL. PROBLEM FOR MARSHAL BUDENNY. (Received This Day. 1.10 p.m.) LONDON, August 11. Seeking to build up the propaganda effect of the apparently considerable German progres sin the Southern Ukraine, officials in Berlin today proclaimed that the present operations will be “decisive," and added that the intensified German offensive in the Ukraine will not imply a decrease of the invaders' pressure on other fronts. “Moscow and Leningrad are seriously threatened,” according to Berlin, but according to “The. Times correspondent on the German frontier, Marshal Voroshilov is easily holding all fronts in the north, while the furious fighting at Smolensk is apparently no nearer a conclusion, despite German claims days ago that the fighting there had ended, except for mopping up. The correspondent points out that it is .impossible, for lack of more precise information, to estimate the exact seriousness of the position in the Southern Ukraine, but Marshal Budenny appears to be facing a situation demanding the exercise of all his famed manoeuvring skill. The Kiev positions are still being held tenaciously, but further south a German force has pressed on to a point only forty miles from Nikolaiev. The Germans clearly aim to encircle all the Red army westward of the Dnieper, thus attempting to surround a territory twice as large as the great battlefield at Bialystok and Minsk. Marshal Budenny, for the first time, faces a real danger of isolation. The Berlin correspondent of the Stockholm “Svenska Dagbladets” quotes a German belief that the Russians have abandoned the idea of defence between the Dniester and Dnieper, and are now’ trying to concentrate their troops on the eastern bank of the Dnieper. A German News Agency declared: “The running battle in the Southern Ukraine is gaining momentum as the forces of Germany and her allies approach the Black Sea.” GERMAN CLAIMS. PROGRESS IN UKRAINE. SOVIET DIVISION WIPED OUT IN NORTH. (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, August 11. A Berlin communique claims that: “The pursuit of the retreating enemy in the Ukraine is progressing rapidly everywhere. Operations in other sectors are proceeding according to plan.”

The German News Agency says forces south of Lake Ilmen completely wiped out the Soviet 180th Division.