RUSSIAN FRONT

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23947, 14 May 1943, Page 5

RUSSIAN FRONT

BOTH SIDES ACTIVE IN AIR SOVIET PLANES BOMB RAILWAY STATIONS (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, May 13. Comparative silence continues to cloak the Russian front, but the Berlin radio, indicating the scale of intensity of the recent Kuban fighting claimed that the Russians in the last 12 days had lost nearly 30,000 dead and wounded and also 200 tanks destroyed or seriously damaged. Both sides seem to have confined their major activities in the last day to hammering each other’s communications and supply bases from the air. A special Soviet communique says: “On Tuesday night the Soviet Air Force carried out raids in large force on railway junctions and railway stations at Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Bryansk, Kharkov, Orel, Krasnograd, Lozovaya, Barvenkova, Yartsevo, and other stations. At the same time our aeroplanes attacked columns of lorries on the highways. “As a result of the bombing a great number of enemy trains and lorries with troops and army supplies were destroyed or damaged. On the railway stations at Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava. and Bryansk large explosions were observed. The Soviet Air Force also attacked successfully a number of enemy aerodromes.” The ordinary Soviet communique says: “On Wednesday, north-east of Novorossiisk, our troops by intensive artillery fire demolished enemy defence lines. Eighteen enemy aeroplanes were shot down, and five Soviet aeroplanes were lost. Two railway engines, 13 trucks carrying Huns, and several waggons of ammunition were destroyed.” This morning's Soviet communique says that in the Lisitichansk area, on the Donets, the Germans broke into an inhabited locality. Russian troops, after fierce street fighting, drove the Germans out, and the Russians pushed on to capture an important strategic height. The British United Press correspondent in Moscow says: “There are signs from Leningrad to Rostov that the spring lull has almost ended and that heavy fighting is on the way. The more intensified air activity on each side is taken as a sure sign of impending action. “The Germans on land have already thrust against Leningrad, but Russian artillerymen halted and drove back the attackers. The Russians have also smashed a German thrust in the Lisitichansk sector, but both these actions were on a small scale compared with the Kuban, where the Russians continue to pound the German positions before Novorossiisk.’’ Reuter’s Moscow correspondent reports that the Russians have begun to infiltrate through holes punched in the German defence system of Novorossiisk but have not yet seriously breached the defences. German batteries dominate the valleys down which the Russians must advance. Infantry attack, and then the Germans counter-attack, and with luck the Red Army holds its positions. Otherwise it starts all over again. It is slow work, but each day the Russians draw closer to their objectives.