GREAT RUSSIAN WINTER OFFENSIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 January 1943, Page 3

GREAT RUSSIAN WINTER OFFENSIVE

Now Entered on Tenth Week GERMAN POSITION DETERIORATING RAPIDLY IN THE VORONEZH REGION AND ELSEWHERE 1 JU • --rr-1 • • LONDON, January 20. The great Russian winter offensive, which has now entered on its tenth week, is still gaining in weight and speed. On.the Voronezh front, the pivot between the northern and southern portions of the line, the German position is rapidlydeteriorating. German troops which should have stemmed the Russian advance have been trapped and the Russians are sweeping on to the west. Up to last night, they had reached and passed the railway centres of Valuiki, linking the Donetz Basin with the German forces further north. The Russians are now on the borders of the Ukraine and are barely 70 miles east of Kharkov. Whenever the enemy makes a halt, Russian motorised units outflank him and drive' on. Thousands of Hungarian and Italian troops on the Voronezh front have surrendered. The Russians are pressing forward their five (main drives on the front of nearly 2000 miles. They are following a gigantic strategy of hitting the enemy hard and rapidly on various parts of the front, giving him no chance to shuttle his forces to meet each new blow. On the Leningrad front fierce fighting is still going on. The Moscow-Leningrad-Murmansk railway is not yet clear of the enemy in this area. From Velikiye Luki, Russians are now pressing an attack westward toward Nevel. On the Don and Caucasus fronts the Rusisans harvested a crop of important railway towns yesterday. The Moscow correspondent of the “News Chronicle’’ says it is now possible to detect signs of a great potential enveloping movement round the Donetz Basin, the greatest industrial area in the , Ukraine.