FEW DEVELOPMENTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 March 1943, Page 3

FEW DEVELOPMENTS

ON THE EASTERN FRONT SOVIET SUCCESS IN SMOLENSK SECTOR. GERMANS AT A STANDSTILL IN DONETZ AREA. LONDON, March 30. No new developments are reported from the Russian battlefront. In one sector in the Smolensk area Soviet troops have overcome stubborn German resistance. On the Donetz front there are no recent reports of any more German attempts to get across the river. The main fighting is on the roads to the Russian bridgeheads. Aircraft are still active. BATTLE EXPECTED NORTH OF AZOV. GROUND DRYING UP. LONDON, March 29. Interest in Russia is shifting to the southern part of the front where the mud is now drying up. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” says that with conditions on the Taman Peninsula improving daily, General Maslennikov’s operations to expel the German remnants clinging to the bridgehead are developing apace. The Russians are now threatening the Temryuk-Krymskaya (Krymsk) road, which is the Axis lifeline to the Crimea. Desperate fighting is inevitable before the Russians are able to drive home a thrust which will probably split the Germans, pinning them against the sea at Novorossisk and Temryuk. This is apparently planned, because the Russian strategy requires the elimination of the bridgehead before a summer campaign was launched. The Russians are not likely to undertake a heavy offensive in the Donetz basin, where the Germans are strong and with good communications. A Russian thrust on the north shore of the Sea of Azov will have better prospects if it is combined with an offensive from Kursk. Elsewhere the Russians’ present and impending activity can be regarded as maintaining local ascendancy and preventing the initiative slipping to the enemy.