EXPECTED AT ANY MOMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1943, Page 3

EXPECTED AT ANY MOMENT

Important Russian Gains Further North t INCREASING THREAT TO KHARKOV AND OTHER AXIS BASES GERMANS IN DON BASIN IN GREAT DANGER OF ENCIRCLEMENT LONDON, February 8. The Russians are now menacing three of Hitler’s key supply centres—Kharkov, Kursk and Orel. Further south, they are separated from another big enemy base, Rostov, only by the width of the River Don. The Russians have crowded many new successes into the past 24 hours, all along the 1000-mile front from the northwestern Caucasus to the great German base of Orel, deep in the centre of the Soviet Union. The most immediate possibility is the fall of Rostov, which is now in deadly peril and is liable to fall to the Russians at any moment. Only the River Don now stands between the Russians and their goal. The river is a mile wide near Rostov and as 1 the Germans will almost certainly have destroyed the only bridge, the Russians massed along the southern bank may have some trouble in getting a foothold, on the northern bank. The Germans have been entirely cleared from the southern bank of the Don and half-way down the southern shores of the Sea of Azov and the only enemy troops south of the Don are the remnants of Hitler’s Caucasian army, now in the extreme western corner of the Kuban territory. They are escaping as fast as they can across the Kerch Straits to the Crimea, but it looks as if they have had to abandon vast stores of heavy equipment brought into the Caucasus only a few months ago. In the rich industrial region of the Don basin large German forces are in great danger of encirclement. Russian troops driving down the western side of the basin threaten to cut off the Germans inside it. As they pressed forward yesterday the Russians captured Kramatorsk, one of the biggest steel and chemical centres in the Don, and since then they have pushed still deeper into enemy held country. They are astride the main railway between the Donetz and Kursk and Kharkov and have already cut the main road between Kursk and Orel. This new thrust puts the Russians 20 miles beyond Hitler’s 1941 defence line and the Soviet forces are drawing closer all the time to the enemy’s three key supply bases.