LIGHTNING ADVANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 February 1943, Page 3

LIGHTNING ADVANCE

BY RUSSIANS IN UKRAINE RAILWAY LINK CUT. ■ SHORTAGE OF GERMAN ARMIES REPORTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, February 21. Moscow last night announced that Rusian columns in the Ukraine Have made a “lightning advance” of 50 miles from Lozovaya, capturing Pavlograd, on the railway to the north-west, and Krasnograd, on the south-west line. In the first thrust the Russians are 40 miles from Poltava. The other brings the Red Army about 40 miles from the Dnieper River bend, where, near Dnepropetrovsk, is the site of the great power dam that was historically smashed by the Russians in 1941. The new advance cuts' the Germans’ last northsouth railway line in front of the Dnieper. The latest communique says that the Russians have continued to advance in the Krasnograd area. Axis reports say that the Russian force which captured a place 40 miles north of Taganrog has linked up with the force advancing from Voroshilovgrad. The Russians, after beating off five counter-attacks, have smashed a German defence line beyond Kursk, and are chasing the Germans toward the Smolensk-Kharkov railway A shortage of German arms and ammunition has been noticed on this and other fronts. Prisoners who were captured west of Kursk revealed that some of the German regiments had only two or three machine-guns because of the abandonment of masses of equipment in the hasty retreat. General Golikov’s troops south of Kursk have reached the River Psiol, a tributary of the Dnieper. The Russians’ capture of Oboyan, which was announced on Friday, gives the Red Army control of the key town on the Kharkov-Kursk-Orel highway. Golikov’s left wing, which took Lyubotin, west of Kharkov, now firmly straddles both the railways leading to Poltava. Oboyan was captured only after a terrific fight, in which the town was encircled and the garrison wiped out to the last man.