GRIM ORDEAL
ENDURED BY PEOPLE OF LENINGRAD FIERCE COUNTER-ATTACKS BY DEFENDERS. 1 NAZI ENCIRCLEMENT CLAIMS RIDICULED. (By Telegraph—-Press Association Copyright) LONDON, September 24. By counter-attacks the Russians havs improved their positions in parts of the Leningrad zone. The Soviet spokesman, M. Lozovsky, said last night that the hostilities there have assumed such a scale that the casualties will stand out even in this war. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times" says that the people _of Leningrad are reported to be suffering great hardships, not so much from actual shelling as from interruptions in the water and electricity supplies, which have disorganised the public services. From the environs of Finland Leningrad is a terrifying sight, specially at night, when incessant firing and the explosion of Russian and German shells is seen across Kronstadt bay. The battle .south of Lake Ilmen continues. There is no new report of a change in the Smolensk sector, where the Germans remain on the defensive. When attention is turned to immense fluid battle-lines southward of the Smolensk region the observer is confronted with the greatest immediate menace to the Soviet, but there is plenty of evidence in many areas that the Russians have not lost in the slightest degree their capacity for fierce counter-attacks. The principal counter-attacks are at a new point on the central front well south of Smolensk and. according to the Germans, at Poltava, 90 miles south-west of Kharkov. “The Times” Stockholm correspondent says that the Germans are apparently the masters of the lower Dnieper from the Black Sea' to the bend, and they also hold all the territory eastward of this reach of the Dnieper as far as the Sea of Azov somewhere to the south of Melitopol (directly below the Dnieper bend). Possession of the reach of the Dnieper between the bend and Kremenchug seems to be still in dispute, but it may be largely held by the Russians, whose reports do not admit that the Germans have advanced beyond the Poltava district, where the retiring Russians checked the drive against Kharkov last weekend. M. Lozovsky pooh-poohed the German claims that large Russian forces have been encircled east of Kiev. “The Germans have made similar claims elsewhere but they were forced to admit their untruth,” he says. He declared that in the battle of Kiev the Germans did not have air superiority, but they did have numerical superiority in tanks. In this connection he expressed warm approval of Britain’s “tanks for Russia” campaign, which he said was.also of great political significance, showing the solidarity between the two countries. Moscow reports that last night only two of a group of German night bombers penetrated the Moscow area and dropped several high-explosive and a small number of incendiary bombs. The damage was insignificant. Reports from Stockholm say that the German and Finnish forces are continuing slow progress east toward the White Sea from the Salla region. Be
tween Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega the Finns are apparently about 20 miles from Petrozavodsk, which they are bombing. (Petrozavodsk is about 60 miles inside the old Russian frontier.) In the drive on Murmansk, a German division is reported to have been broken up. Berlin admits that the Russians are still holding out on the island of Osel. The Germans claim that their divebombers scored two hits on the Russian 23,000-ton battleship October Revolution, and they claim to have hit two other warships also. The “Red Star” states that south of Lake Ilmen in recent fighting the 56th German army corps and the Bth tank division were smashed in vain attacks on Russian positions.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 September 1941, Page 5
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598GRIM ORDEAL Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 September 1941, Page 5
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