RUSSIAN COUNTER-BLOW

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 66, 15 September 1941, Page 7

RUSSIAN COUNTER-BLOW

ISOLATION THREAT

ATTACKERS OF LENINGRAD

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

LONDON, September 14.

Dispatches from the front yesterday revealed that the Russians have launched a counter-attack which threatens to isolate the German forces besieging Leningrad. They are pushing the Germans back along the Moscow-Latvia railway, 250 miles south of Leningrad. This' threat from the south is the reason for General yon Leeb's desperate bid to capture Leningrad within a few days, says the Stockholm correspondent of "The Times," but the German commander is bound to be disappointed, because scarcely anywhere are his forces within •20 miles of Leningrad. i The Germans cannot maintain the present-offensive for long, this correspondent says. They are battling through driving rain and along shelltorn roads under fire from heavy artillery and thousands of machine-guns concentrated along a vast chain of steel casemates and underground fortresses. TIMOSHENKO'S OFFENSIVE. Marshal Timoshenko, commanding the central front, has also taken the offensive near the Valdai Hills (south of Valdai). The German armies in this neighbourhood are partly hemmed in by Lake Peipus and the Gulf of Finland, and the unbeaten forces of Marshal Voroshilov are between .the Valdai Hills and the immediate eastern approaches to Leningrad. Moscow reports that armoured trains are operating over a vast network of lines, hitting the Finns in the north and the Germans in the south. They have made devastating attacks, repelling enemy assaults against stations and bridgeheads, and have also smashed tank columns and helped to bottle up the Finns between the lakes north-east of Leningrad. A great battle which has been proceeding since the end of August in the \ Bryansk area is described in an article in the Soviet army newspaper "Red Star." The writer states that the Germans broke through late in August in the direction of Bryansk, but the Red Army, in a counter-attack which was launched on September 1, routed the 47th. and 29th tank corps and the 17th and 18th motorised divisions, mainly in the battle of Troubchevsk (55 miles south-west of Bryansk and 135 miles due east of Gomel). The' Germans in this battle lost near- j ly 10,000 officers and men, more than 260 tanks, 600 vehicles, and 100 field guns. The 29th motorised division was also broken up and forced to retreat. .Twenty-six towns and villages were recaptured by the advancing Soviet forces. ' ' Describing the great part played by the Red air force in these battles, the writer says that in the course of a week Soviet bombers dropped 29,000 bombs. The battle, he says, is still proceeding. *