RUSSIANS CLOSING ON KHARKOV

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23538, 16 January 1942, Page 5

RUSSIANS CLOSING ON KHARKOV

(Received January 15, 11.20 p.m.) (U.P.A.) LONDON. January 15. With Medyn, 25 miles west of Malo Yaroslavets, in their hands, Russian forces in the southern arm of the great pincers movement on the Moscow front are now within 38 miles of the German line of retreat along the road from Mozhaisk to Vyazma. Other Russian forces have launched a massed frontal assault against the Germans holding the Mozhaisk salient, and in the battle now going on one key position east of the town is said to have changed hands several times. In the eastern Ukraine, Marshal Timoshenko’s forces are engaged in a big and important battle for Kharkov. Soviet forces have broken the German defences at one point and the Germans have made a hasty transfer of forces to prevent a major break-through. According to the Stockholm correspondent of the “Daily Express,” Soviet shock troops last night were within eight miles of the centre of the city, with the Germans desperately resisting in the university quarter. A second Russian column, he says, is exerting heavy pressure on the German defences to the north-east of the city.

The correspondent adds that the Russians engaged the German advance guard at Chuguyevo, 20 miles southeast of the city. Thousands of Germans died in a savage battle, after which the Russians pressed on through the enemy's defensive system of zigzag trenches and wire entanglements, where all barns and peasants’ cottages were reinforced and into pill-boxes bristling with machine-guns.

communiques of the last 48 hours il the determination of the Russians not to allow the Germans to withdraw for the remainder of the winter only as far fl as Smolensk. It is beyond dispute, he declares, that the Germans’ hold on what is left of Smolensk is threatened. The Russians' object is not only to liberate territory but to cripple the Germans' power to strike back in the spring. Fierce battles are going on in the Leningrad region, where the Russian* are making steady progress. They have qow cleared almost the whole of the eastern bank of the Volkhov river, and at one point have broken through the German positions on the western bank, recapturing a village 65 miles south-east of Leningrad. The Stockholm correspondent of thi “Daily Telegraph” says that a terrific battle is raging in the village of Suja, 15 miles north-east of Simferopol, capital of the Crimea. Russian forces which landed on the north-west coast of the Crimea . are making progress towards the bottleneck of the Perekop Isthmus.

The Russians have now brought up heavy artillery and are blasting German positions to atoms. The Germans are unable to construct new lines nearer Kharkov because the ground is frozen and excavation is possible only by using dynamite. Cossack Cavalry and ski units with "tommy” guns are attacking strong posts one after another. The British Broadcasting Corporation's observer in Kuibishev, speaking of the .wide, sweeping Soviet thrusts or. the Moscow front, says it is now possible to see something of the grandeur 'and scope of the operations. What seems most clear from the Russian