PARALYSING BLOWS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 December 1943, Page 4

PARALYSING BLOWS

STRUCK BY RED ARMY ENEMY COMMUNICATIONS CUT. IN UKRAINE & WHITE RUSSIA. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.45 a.m.) LONDON, December 28. General Vatutin, after crushing the enemy’s central defence points along the vital Fastov-Vinnitsa Railway, crossed the railway in a southerly direction and plunged the spear of his army into the heart of the German positions which screen the approaches to the front areas in the South-Western Ukraine. General Vatutin has also cut the Berdichev-Baleyatserkov Highway. Another Red Army column has struck across the Berdichev-Jitomir Highway. Thus the enemy’s three main communication lines in the Jitomir area are paralysed just when winter conditions have made communications doubly important to him. A British United Press correspondent says it was a division of Cossack cavalry that cut the Vitebsk-Polotsk Railway. It had already cut the Vitebsk-Polotsk Highway. Its commander, sensing that the situation was favourable to another sudden attack, swept on a further six miles and gained the railway. The Germans were so completely caught by surprise that the Russian horsemen, when they reached the railway embankment, met a troop train moving towards them, constituting one of the strangest meetings of rival forces of the whole campaign. Mobile guns, which had followed up the Cossacks, blasted the locomotive ■ and smashed several wagons. The Cossacks wheeled and charged down the railway track. The Germans who were ' spilling out of the wrecked train fled to the woods before the flying riders. Some of the enemy rallied and tried to stage resistance around the train, and enemy reinforcements arrived from.Polotsk in an armoured train, but the Cossacks held on and remained astride the railway.

MORE GAINS MADE BY THE RUSSIANS DRIVE TOWARDS JITOMIR & KOROSTEN (Received This Day, 12.45 a.m.) LONDON, December 28. The Russians have captured Korostyshev. This was announced in tonight’s Soviet communique which says: “The Red Army in the Vitebsk sector, overcoming counter-attacks, occupied several places. Troops of the First Ukrainian Front are continuing their offensive and have occupied Korostyshev, also Koteyvka, which is a district centre in the Jitomir region, and 60 other places. The Russians, north of Kirovgrad, repelled large infantry and tank attacks, inflicting heavy losses. Koteyvka is ten miles south-west of Malin. The Russians also captured Zlobichi, five miles south-east of Korosten.”