VICTORIOUS DRIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 January 1943, Page 3

VICTORIOUS DRIVE

ENEMY REARGUARDS BRUSHED ASIDE IMPORTANT PROGRESS MADE. TOWARDS KEY RAILWAY TOWNS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, January 14. Driving north-west 25 miles a day, Russian vanguards are now 50 miles beyond the Georgievsk-Prikumsk railway, reports Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. They have captured Zhuraskoe, 40 miles west of Prikumsk, bringing Stavropol within striking distance and threatening Armavir. The retreating Germans have been driven from still more places and where rearguards have attempted to stem the Russian advance in this area, they have been brushed aside. In the last 24 hours, the Soviet forces driving forward on a 100-mile front toward Voroshilovsk, about 80 miles away, and Armavir, 100 miles up the railway to Rostov, have made important progress. Yesterday’s Russian air attack on the airfield at Krasnodar, the Kuban capital, was most successful, more than 40 Axis aircraft being destroyed. On the lower Don, another big German tank attack has been thrown back. The enemy attacked again and again, but was driven back, and it is reported that the Nazis lost 2000 men and 40 tanks. The Russians then took up the offensive and captured several more villages on the road to Rostov. The Russians are now west of Kuberle, on the trans-Caucasian railway. Inside the factory area at Stalingrad, Russian assault detachments have thrown the Germans out of more buildings.