MORE RUSSIAN GAINS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 January 1943, Page 3

MORE RUSSIAN GAINS

IN VORONEZH AREA ADVANCE OF FIFTY MILES FRCM SALSK. FATE OF BALKAN DIVISIONS. (By Telegraph—Press Annexation—Copyright) LONDON, January 26. Reports from Moscow soy that the Red Army is continuing its drive in the Voronezh area, capturing more territory and net permitting the enemy forces to break away. The advance is o ~rontly westward toward Kastornoye and Kursk, and south-westward toward Byelgorod and Kharkov. According to the Vichy radio, snowstorms are raging south of Voronezh, wheer bitter fighting is in progress. On the north Caucasian plains the fall of Byelaya Glina, the capture of which was announced last night, represents a Russian advance of 50 miles from Salsk. Along almost every sector of the wide-flung front from Voronezh southward the Germans appear to be unable to stop the Russian advance, and the threats to Hitler’s main bases —Kharkov, Kursk and Rostov—grow more acute as the Red Army advances, mopping up isolated groups of the enemy and continually loosening the German defences. Soviet reinforcements moving up through the smoke-filled streets of burning Voronezh, are passing long files of German prisoners. The Russians have reached a point 65 miles east of Kharkov, while the troops which have reconquered the regions of the lower Don, the Sal and the Kubau steppes are rapidly closing in on Kropotkin and Tikhoretsk. They are within 35 miles of both places, increasing the peril of encirclement and threatening the Germans on the shores of the Sea of Azov. The “Red Star,” discussing the heavy losses of the Rumanians and Hungarians, says that out of 13 divisions the Hungarians have lost nine, representing half of the Hungarian Army, and the Rumanians in the last two months have lost 18 out of 22 divisions, leaving only five or six divisions inside Rumania. General Denisov, drawing attention to the Luftwaffe’s troubles, says it is suffering from a shortage of men trained for winter fighting. The German planes are not built to withstand the Russian winter and many, unable to take off, are captured by the Russians. The numerically superior Red Air Force is continually attacking the fleeing German troops and hammering their retreating transport. HINGE THAT HELD VITAL POINT AT WHICH ENEMY WAS STOPPED. I ’ (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 26. For several critical weeks, six months ago, the Voronezh sector was given first place in the Soviet communiques. Though the German armies sweeping down between the Don and Donetz rivers were rolling up the whole southern front, this almost stationary sector was thus recognised as a vital place whore the enemy must not be allowed to pass. Voronezh was a hinge. The Germans never took the whole city. The hinge held and the door, though flung open, was never thrown down. Four months later the Russians began to swing it back, and now the Germans have lost their grasp on the hinge itself. Voronezh wrecked the Germans’ last hope of being able to defeat Russia before America could mobilise. The current German argument that the bridgehead had been abandoned to shorten the line is proved wrong by the obvious advantage to the Russians of having regained the principal railway running south from Moscow along its whole length to the Donetz industrial basin. Moreover, the shortening of the line

will not increase the German reserves unless the enemy can reform his battered divisions, which represent a loss far exceeding any gain which might accrue from the shortening of the line.