IMPORTANT ADVANCES
MADE BY RUSSIAN TROOPS ON KHARKOV FRONT. MANY INHABITED PLACES OCCUPIED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 1.0 p.m.) LONDON, August 19. The Russians have made important new advances in three directions on the Kharkov front, Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says. The Russians now are threatening the city from the south, where they are only six or eight miles away. Red Army columns, which bypassed Kharkov from Byelgorod, have advanced to Oposhnia (80 miles west of Kharkov) and reached a point only 24 miles north of Poltava The Russians north-west of Kharkov, after a new push stand seven miles south of Sumy.
Tonight’s Soviet communique states: “The Russians on the Briansk front have advanced and have occupied twenty inhabited localities. On the Kharkov front the Russians have advanced in some sectors three to eight miles and occupied over thirty inhabited places.” The “Pravda” says German prisoners stated that the German Command ordered that Kharkov must be held to the very last. All lightly wounded men have been told to remain in the ranks. The Russians, in their massive assault against Kharkov are apparently concentrating now on cutting off the city itself entirely. Correspondents emphasise the importance of the capture of Smiyev, because it is only twenty miles south-east of Merefa, where the last two remaining German escape railway lines south and southwest from Kharkov join into a single line.
The British United Press correspondent points out that if the Russians cut this single line anywhere between Kharkov and Merefa, both routes will be severed and the Kharkov garrison finally cut off. The Russians, since the capture of Smiyev, have already broken through the German positions east of the town in the direction of Merefa. The “Red Star” asserts that the Russian advance from Chuguyev and the capture of Smiyev compelled the Germans to clear a considerable stretch of the right bank of the Northern Donetz. It adds that the German command had ordered the troops to hold Smiyev, at least for another two or three days but the Russians stormed and took the town. The British United Press correspondent, describing the capture of Smiyev, says huge forces for two days fought for the town. The Russians took the railway station and then their armoured spearheads smashed the German line and broke into the town itself. The Russians followed up by capturing a village north of Smiyev and also broke into the town from the northern suburbs. The Russians split up two groups and after allnight fighting, street by street, the German garrison was wiped out. The Germans counter-attacked with tanks and infantry against the Russian lines west of Kharkov. The Russians held off these onslaughts while their own main attack was directed against the enemy’s Donetz lines. The collapse of the German Donetz positions lays the area south of Kharkov open for another and perhaps final Russian drive to close the last roads from the city.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1943, Page 4
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487IMPORTANT ADVANCES Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1943, Page 4
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