SOVIET OFFENSIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 February 1943, Page 3

SOVIET OFFENSIVE

LOOKS MORE FORMIDABLE THAN EVER INCREASING GERMAN DIFFICULTIES. ON WHOLE SOUTHERN FRONT. (Received This Day, 10.45 a.m.) LONDON, February 2. With Rostov coming within range of heavy guns and-the Red armies menacing many keypoints of German communications, Russia’s gigantic winter offensive

looks more formidable than at any

time since it started in the middle

of November.

The Russians are now fast approaching the lines from which the Germans launched the campaign which Hitler declared would be decisive.

Moscow correspondents say that the Voronezh offensive threatens to break through behind the Germans on the Upper Donetz. The Russians at Gremyache and Yastrebovka, which are 50 •miles apart west of Voronezh, are within 60 miles of Kursk and are still advancing, destroying German ski troops which have been drawn from reserves. To the south the Russians are hourly compressing the arc before Rostov. Their armies are still advancing irresistibly, increasingly imperilling 24 Axis divisions fighting with their back to the sea. The enemy is struggling desperately to keep open the Krasnodar-Rostov railway, but of it are single track and incapable of rapidly evacuating so many thousands with equipment. Fresh menaces are arising for the Germans in' the Caucasian foothills around Tuapse, endangering Novorossisk, while four Russian columns are converging on Krasnodar, collecting considerable booty which the Germans have abandoned.