SURVEY OF FRONTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 January 1943, Page 3

SURVEY OF FRONTS

SOVIET PROGRESS IN MANY AREAS RAPID ADVANCE IN CENTRAL CAUCASUS. NAZIS VAINLY DENYING LOSS • OF VELIKIYE LUKI. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.57 a.m.) RUGBY, January 14. The Russian offensive at the moment apparently is making most progress in the Central Caucasus. Continuing their advance on a broad front of about 100 miles, the Russians have covered about 40 miles since crossing the Kuma River and are now only about 60 miles from Voroshilovsk, an important centre in the Northern Caucasus. They are thus, in this direction, only about 200 miles from the Lower Don and Rostov. German communiques refer to Russian offensives in the Voronezh and Leningrad areas which are not mentioned in the latest Soviet communiques. The Germans persist, too, in describing fighting in and about Velikiye Luki, as if the place had never been captured from them. The view taken in London is that they may hope to regain the town, so that the necessity of admitting its loss would not arise. German resistance is undoubtedly stubborn and formidable in the region of the Sal and Manich rivers, 50 to 100 miles east of Rostov. The enemy is fighting hard to prevent the development of any Russian advance which would threaten the vitally important railway junction of Tikhoretsk. The Russians coming down the railway from Zimovniki are still 100 miles north-west of Tikhoretsk. News of the Germans being ejected from the western suburbs of Stalingrad may indicate that the Russians think the time has approached when the encircled army has been sufficiently weakened by weeks of hardship

and strain for its final destruction to be possible. No Russian communique, however, reports more than intense local fighting.