PROGRESS CONTINUES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 January 1943, Page 3

PROGRESS CONTINUES

ON SIX FIGHTING FRONTS SOVIET OFFICIAL REPORT. ADDITIONAL CAPTURES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.50 a.m.) RUGBY, January 24. The Russian offensive continues in the area of Stalingrad, south of Voronezh, in the Northern Caucasus, in an area of the Lower Don, in an area of Northern Donetz, and south of Lake Ladoga, according to the latest Soviet communiques. Advancing along the Railways beyond Salsk yesterday, the Russians reached places 70 miles northeast of the Tikhoretsk junction, and 80 miles south-east of Rostov, while a rapid recovery of the Northern Caucasus has continued north-east and south of Armavir. The Russians have also extended their grip on the Oskol River. In the Lower Don area the Russians took Razvalnoe and Tselina, 20 miles south-west and west of Salsk, the state farm and station at Trabetskaya. In the Northern Caucasus they took Izobilkoye, 25 miles north-west of Voroshilovsk, Otradnaya, 25 miles south-west of Nevinomysk, and dozens of smaller places, while partisans near Katasnoder killed thirty and wounded forty of a German garrison. On the Voronezh front the Rusians took Volokonovka, 25 miles north-west of Valuiki and Budennoye. NAZI CLAIM GREAT COUNTER-ATTACKS BEING PREPARED. LONDON, January 23. Military authorities in Berlin claim that the situation of the Russian troops

will change for the worse when the German High Command abandons its tactics of falling back to prearranged positions to avoid unjustifiably high losses. The Axis forces are ready to begin large-scale counter-attacks on the whole of the eastern front, they declare. The Berlin “Nachtausgabe” says: “Never in history has a limited number of any nation’s army been confronted with such a concentration of tanks and guns as our men at Stalingrad. The German army is steadfast. The German factory workers, even under- the spell of the events on the eastern front, must not allow their thoughts to wander from their duty. Their work was never so important as it is now.”