LOSOVAYA VICTORY BRINGS VITAL GAINS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 37, 13 February 1943, Page 5

LOSOVAYA VICTORY BRINGS VITAL GAINS

POWERFUL BLOWS

All Hun Forces In Donetz May Be Trapped

Rec. 1 p.m. RUGBY, Feb. 12. Military quarters in London regard the German resistance on the important central section of the Donetz front, covering Artemovsk, Gorlovka, Stalino and Voroshilovgrad, as in danger of being stultified by the rapid Russian advance westward through Losovaya—an advance comparable with the speed of the Eighth Army in Libya. Doubt is expressed whether the Germans have sufficient reserves to stem the westward Soviet drive on the 250-mile front between Orel and Losovaya, and so enable the Donetz armies to disengage themselves before they are surrounded. That retirements from _ the Donetz will not be unmolested is shown by the Russians crossing the Lower Don just above Novcherkaska. The Russians gained a further important victory by capturing the town of Losovaya, 75 miles south of Kharkov. Losovaya is one of the chief railway centres of German communication in the whole of southern Russia, and one of the points from which the German offensive started last summer. _ The success represents the Russians' deepest thrust into the heart of the Ukraine. It also puts them about 60 miles from the Dnieper River and the great town of Dnepropetrovsk. By this new blow the Russians have achieved three vital successes. They have driven a deep wedge between the German armies at Kharkov and those in the Donetz Basin. They have cut the trunk railway that runs south from Kharkov to the Crimea, and they have put the Germans in the Donetz bend in an even worse position by cutting the main railway by which they could escape to the west. One correspondent says the German plan to hold a defence line along the northern Donetz has now been smashed. The Russians have obtained bridgeheads across the river on a broad front, and the German positions have been so outflanked that the enemy has to fight all the time with one eye to escape. Reuter's Moscow correspondent says Hitler's forces everywhere are retreating or, where no way of retreat is left, striving to stave off annihilation. The German armies as far as Rostov face a new Stalingrad after the fall of Losovaya. The Russians moving toward Dnepropetrovsk threaten to break the Dnieperdefence line before the Donetz armies* can escape the rapidly closing trap in the Donetz basin. The German news agency's military commentator says the Red Army is preparing a far-flung movement to the Dnieper, aiming to encompass the Germans near Rostov or to compel them to retreat hastily to the lower Dnieper. Moscow radio reports that the Germans in the Ukraine have brought up considerable fresh forces of tanks and motorised infantry and are launching frequent counter-attacks.