GERMANS IN FULL RETREAT

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13055, 25 January 1943, Page 3

GERMANS IN FULL RETREAT

RUSSIAN SUCCESS IN SOUTH Oilfield Railway Centre Captured Fresh Victories On Other Fronts London, Jan. 24. In South Russia the Germans are in full retreat across the Kuban plains. Moscow issued a special announcement on Saturday about the fall of Armavir. This town commands the only railway line to the Maikop oilfields and is on the direct railway line which leads north to Rostov. The taking of Armavir is, like the capture of Salsk, a success of the first order for the Russians. The Germans are abandoning immense quantities of supplies and many dead. The Soviet forces in the northern Caucasus are fanning out and advancing with tremendous speed. They are trapping enemy troops as they go, wiping them out and then going on without slackening. Some correspondents say that the Maikop area is probably being evacuated by the Germans already. On the Voronezh front 17 Axis divisions have been routed and 64,000 prisoners taken. The Russians in this area are still liquidating isolated enemy groups. An important railway centre has been captured near Bi'elgorod only 75 miles north-east of Kharkov. Nearer Rostov the city of Voroshilovgrad is already under Russian artillery fire and the Red Army is tightening the ring round the town.. Soviet forces are only 10 miles away from Voroshilovgrad to the east. The German communiques now admit the fact that the Axis force outside Stalingrad is doomed. They say that the garrison is at the end of its tether and admit further - breaches from the west by powerful Russian forces.