CLOSE THREAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 October 1943, Page 4

CLOSE THREAT

TO LAST GREAT NAZI BASES IN RUSSIA ALONG FRONT OF THOUSAND MILES. ENEMY DEFENCE OF KIEV TOTTERING. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, October 13. Eight great German bases along a front of nearly a thousand miles are immediately threatened by the Red Army. These towns—Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilev, Gomel, Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhe and and Melitopol—are the only big bases standing between the Red Army and the borders of Latvia, Poland and Rumania. At the southern end of the front the Russians are 200 miles cast of the Rumanian border. At Kiev they arc 150 miles east of Poland and north of Vitebsk they are within about 45 miles of Latvia. London observers believe that it is well within the capacity of the Russians to smash through these distances within a few weeks. Meanwhile the Germans are systematically mutilating Kiev and employing the scorched earth method which they always adopt when about to give up any strongpoint, and the evacuation of the city appears to be imminent. The British United Press Moscow correspondent, cabling tonight, says the capital of the Ukraine is already a dead city. Despite the absence of a definite announcement from Russian or German sources, the correspondent goes so far as to say that “the Germans have driven thousands of citizens from Kiev and apparently have sacked the city and left it practically deserted, with probably only a covering screen of troops to try to hold back the Russians.” The correspondent adds that a Russian frontal assault against the burning city has begun. The assault is being made from Rukhanov Island, in the Dnieper. 300 yards from Kiev’s outskirts. The Germans have blown up two bridges connecting the island with Kiev. The Russians on the -west bank of the Dnieper are also tightening their grip on the approaches to the city. ’ The Russians have entered Melitopol (north of the Sea of Azov). Fighting is now raging in the centre of the town. The Germans are suffering big losses in men and equipment. The correspondent continues that General Rokossovsky’s troops have launched their assault under the greatest air umbrella ever put up on the Russian front, and that the biggest air battles of the war are raging around Kiev. The flames sweeping Kiev can be seen for miles. Huge palls of smoke fill the air. Escapees from the city say that most of its important buildings and monuments have been .blown up. and that dynamite charges have torn the main street apart. For a twenty-mile radius around Kiev houses, parks and even orchards have been razed. GERMAN BESTIALITY. The “Izvestia’s” front line correspondent says Russians who escaped from the city tell of terrible things the Germans have done. For two years they have been mercilessly killing off the inhabitants. A gallows was erected in the city square-, and tens of thousands of graves testify to German brutality. Kiev's suburbs have been burnt to the ground. Reuter's Moscow correspondent says the Germans, in an effort to stave off the crushing weight of Russian reinforcements streaming across the Dnieper, are pressing into service old Rumanian planes and even obsolete types of planes captured in the Western front campaign of 1940. This sorry collection is going into action, under the protection of groups of modern Messerschmitts, in an attempt to regain air superiority. The Moscow radio declares that the Russians have driven a wedge far into the German lines on the west bank of the Dnieper, and the German news agency admits that, in face of largescale attacks from Russian bridgeheads on the west bank, German defence positions have had to be withdrawn in certain places to avoid a threatening breach.