RELIEF OF LENINGRAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 17, 21 January 1943, Page 5

RELIEF OF LENINGRAD

MOMENTOUS FEAT

LONDON, January 19. , Tlie Moscow correspondent of tli 2 "Daily T«legraph" says that the relief of Leningrad is momentous, first, because it releases a huge Russian army for new offensives; ■"*• secondly, because direct communication between Leningrad and Moscow will be restored within a few weeks; thirdly, because direct transport to Leningrad along the main trans-Siberian railway will ba resumed, enabling coal, steel, and iron to be brought to the great plants of Russia's first industrial centre, which will resume arms production after a year of idleness; and. fourthly, because the Volkhov River power station will a [rain supply Leningrad's industries. ■ These advantages justify the sacri- ' 9 fice of scores of thousands of Russian lives in the costly Sinyavino offensive •last autumn, which prepared the way

for the relief of the city, the correspondent says. "It is reliably reported that Finland made overtures to Britain for a satisfactory peace, but that consummation was balked by the German forces in Finland," says the military commentator of the New York newspaper "P.M." "Tne raising of the siege of Leningrad is important because of its possible effect on Finland's contribution to the Axis. "Fighting has been negligible on Finland's tiny front, but Finnish airfields are vital in the,, battle for supplies en route to Murmansk. The great bulk of the Finnish people are striving desperately for peace, and now would be a good time for them to end hostilities 'when Hitler's thinly-spread troops are busy on half a dozen other fronts. "There is insufficient German strength to wage . a campaign in Finland."