GERMAN LES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 January 1942, Page 4

GERMAN LES

EXPOSED ON EASTERN FRONT Not Least in the Crimea PLANNED WITHDRAWAL TALK MADE RIDICULOUS POSSIBLE THREAT TO ENEMY FORCES BEFORE SEBASTOPOL (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.35 p.m.) RUGBY, January 1. While the latest Russian communique merely reports fighting last night on all fronts, the Russian capture of Kirishi Junction, west of the River Volkhov, on the Leningrad-Novgorod railway, is regarded in military circles in London as of considerable importance. In the first place, it cuts off supplies by rail to the German troops on the Leningrad front. Secondly it shows that the Russians have crossed the Volkhov and cut the mam road from Novgorod to the Leningrad front. Comment is also made on the Crimean situation, where the Russian capture of Kerch and Theodosia illustrates the untruthfulness of habitual German statements that their retirements are according to plan. The withdrawal in the Eastern Crimea can by no stretch of the imagination be described as a planned, “line-shortening” operation. The fact that no marked natural obstacles exist along the northern shores of the Crimea means that a Russian westward drive in any force may place the Germans in front of Sebastopol in a precarious position. There is, however, no evidence that the Russian landings have yet affected the situation in this way.