NEW PHASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 February 1943, Page 4

NEW PHASE

OPENED ON THE EASTERN FRONT LAST YEAR’S AXIS GAINS VIRTUALLY GONE. GREAT BREACH IN ENEMY defences:" (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.50 a.m.) RUGBY, February 9. The recapture of the great industrial city and iron ore' centre of Kursk opens a new phase on the Eastern front. Hitherto the Russians have been regaining ground lost last year. Now not only are last year’s gains virtually wiped out, but the Russians have also made a great breach in the Germans’ “East wall,’’ which hitherto has defended the enormously rich area of Southern Russia held by the invaders. The suddenness of the capture of Kursk is regarded as of the greatest importance in point of morale, for it is on the retreating army that the moral effect is heaviest.

In the Donetz bend, the Germans are faced with the alternatives of holding on or retreating. Interest centres on Gorlovka, 25 miles north-east of Stalino. The Russians, attacking from the north, are much closer to this traffic centre of the Donetz Basin than the Germans defending the river line over 100 miles to the East. If the Germans are unable to check the drive on Gorlovka it seems inevitable that they must attempt a rapid retreat. It appears unlikely that the rapidity of the Russian ' advance will expose the Soviet forces to the possibility of attack, because the Germans evidently have used all their reserves in attempts to plug gaps caused by Russian encirclements. Indeed, the Russians in recent weeks have driven the Germans back faster than they advanced in the summer. The latest Moscow communique says progress continues along the front from Kursk to the Donetz Basin, and the advance continues from Kursk itself, across the railway north of Byelgorod, east of Khanuov, and southwards into 1 the industrial area into- the region of Kramatorskaya. Action is also being taken against the lost German, pocket of

resistance in the Caucasus east of the Kerch Strait. Yesterday the'Russians resumed their advance on Krasnodar, from 20 and 35 miles away in the northeast and north respectively. The Taman Peninsula, south of Yeisk, and the coast from there to the mouth of the Don, seems to have been completely cleared of the Germans.