Russians In Ukraine STAND ON THE DNIEPER

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 41, 16 August 1941, Page 9

Russians In Ukraine STAND ON THE DNIEPER

: LONDON, August 15. While fierce fighting is reported along the whole Russian front, the Ukraine, although not mentioned in today's Moscow communique, is still regarded as the most important battlefield. Events suggest that the Russians are preparing to make a stand around the last great bend of the Dnieper, whose banks the Germans do not appear to have reached at morethan a few points. Correspondents in Moscow suggest that the next few days will show the success of Marshal Budenny's deliberate retreat to country that is easier to defend than the evacuated rural areas in the western Ukraine. These correspondents point out that besides having to fight the Kussian forces, the Germans would have to deal with an intensely patriotic industrial population of tough and freedomloving south Russians descended from the famous Cossacks who for centuries have fought against invaders. They would defend the* Ukraine's most important region, containing the iron ore centre, which the Germans claim to have captured already, \ and the great Dnieper Dam. It is pointed out in London that if a"d fields in the Ukraine into quag-i the Germans do occupy the whole of mir es- ' *u~ r»,-^~,- ooi-« *■ *v mi v In the central sector, fierce fighting the Dnieper salient they will have cont inues in the month-old battle captured altogether only one-fortieth around Smolensk. of Russia proper between the White Moscow tonight reports a dispatch Sea and the Black Sea. from one of the Russian generals, who says that the Germans have been. There is evidence that in his ap- forced to abandon blitz tactics and that parently well-ordered withdrawal to the Russians are driving them back so' the banks of the Dnieper Marshal that they are now on the defensive. Budenny has left little behind him for The town of Staraya-Russa, south of the Germans. What has not been Lake Ilmen, appears again in today's gathered of the Ukraine harvest has communique. It is suggested that the been burnt, and factories in the area Russians are successfully thwarting tha have been put out of action. German effort to close the pincer The difficulties encountered by the around Leningrad. | German troops in the advance in the The latest German communique anUkraine are emphasised by a Nazi war nounces the encirclement of Odessa \ correspondent in a dispatch quoted by Rumanian' troops,, and of Nikolaietf |by the German radio tonight. Speak- by German and Hungarian v forces. | ing of enemy resistance and the great Moscow so far, has not mentioned | natural obstacles, he says that the either of these' Black Sea towns, and t Rivers Prut, Dniester, Bug, and Dnie- it seems clear that both are still held i per, of which much mention is made by the Russian army. jin German "communiques, were ex- The Russians say that some of the tremely difficult to cross on account best German divisions are engaged in of their unusual width and depth. Con- the. centrOl sector, but that they have \ tinuous rains have transformed roads now ceased to exist. ' t