COSTLY PROGRESS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 March 1943, Page 4

COSTLY PROGRESS

ON THE DONETZ FRONT MAY BE BAD INVESTMENT FOR GERMANS. FIRM STAND BY RUSSIANS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, March 21. The struggle in the Chuguyev sector, south-east of Kharkov, has become more critical with the news, issued in Moscow today, that the Russians have again been pressed back at one point. Dispatches from the front line all give the same picture of continued and ever fiercer German attacks, first at one point and then another, against the Russians who, though hard-press-ed, are standing up everywhere to the enemy. Though the Germans have advanced there is nothing to suggest that they have achieved anything in the nature of a major break-through. One correspondent says:—“The Germans are going well, but so are the Russians, and it may yet be that the Germans’ costly gains are a bad investment.” The Moscow correspondent of “The Times” says that as the Russians plan on the central front unfolds it is clear that it has been made carefully. The Germans are being outmanoeuvred and outgeneralled in a succession of battles larger than the official reports suggest. For example, the Russians, in capturing the Izdeshkovo railway station, defeated three divisions of infantry and one motorised division, and also a rifle division, and captured many guns and mortars.