RUSSIAN SWEEP TO THE BALTIC

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 181, 2 August 1944, Page 5

RUSSIAN SWEEP TO THE BALTIC

C/fy Of fawssi Falls ESCAPE ROADS CUT FOR 30 GERMAN DIVISIONS ' (N.Z.P.A. —Copyright.—Rec. noon.) LONDON, August 1. The capture of Kaunas, formerly Kovno, capital of Lithuania, which Marshal Stalin announced in an Order of the Day this evening, will release more men and machines to swell the big Red Army force which threatens to sweep over the East Prussian frontier up to the Baltic, says Reuters correspondent in Moscow. The Order describes Kaunas as an operationally and politically important centre covering the approaches to East Prussia. The Russian forces driving to Riga have cut off from East Prussia the German armies in the north Baltic States. In the past 24 hours General Bagramyan's forces have made an advance of 30 miles and captured Tukums, less than ten miles from the Gulf of Riga. They have thus cut off all escape routes by land for the Germans in the north, who now have only slender chances of getting away by sea. The enemy force entrapped is estimated at 30 divisions. This latest Red Army gain has by-passed the Latvian port of Riga.

The best German units all along the line are failing to stem the Russian advance except south-west of Bialystok, where they have made more effective resistance, but this is not helping the Germans before Warsaw, capital of Poland, where a solid Russian front has been formed. Russians fighting in the suburb of Praga can hear the sound of explosions across the River Vistula as German demolition squads put the city through its final agony.

Red Air Force pilots to-day reported that the Germans are burning and blowing up buildings. All German officials and their families have left Warsaw, and only the Gestapo and military remain, according to a report received by the Polish Government in London. The Associated Press correspondent in Moscow reports that Russian and Polish troops under an umbrella of hundreds of planes attacked Praga from three sides. One of the greatest artillery concentrations on the entire Eastern Front ripped the German entrenchments on the edge of Praga, which faces Warsaw from the east bank of the Vistula. Warsaw is also threatened by Russian outflanking manoeuvres, in which the Red Army is attempting to bridge the Vistula south-east of the capital, while another column is fighting close to the river from the north-west. Litest front line dispatches indicate that the Germans are deter-? mined to make a very bitter stand for Warsaw. "The flood approaches Warsaw," said Berlin radio commentator Dietmar to-night, but the German news agency commentator von Hammer claimed that the Germans have eliminated six of seven Russian bridgeheads on the west bank of the Vistula River.