UTTER CONFUSION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 21, 26 January 1943, Page 5

UTTER CONFUSION

THE AXIS FORGES

LONDON, January 24. The Russians have -grasped the initiative on the Voronezh, front more decisively than at any other time dur-j ing the war, says the Moscow corre-' spondent of "The Times." Mobile columns are ploughing up the enemy positions and inflicting enormous losses on the Axis forces, which have been thrown into utter confusion, and there are as yet no signs of a successful restoration of the position. The vital Kursk-Kharkov railway is imperilled while such a situation continues. ' The correspondent emphasises that the Russian front in the Caucasus is 200 miles broad. Though the Germans have the choice of several highroads from Maikop to the KrasnodarTxkhoretsk railway, which the Red Air Force is heavily bombing, the Russian momentum down the Baku-Rostov railway makes such a line of escape precarious. With the other land routes threatened, the Kerch Straits are again assuming importance, specially as the Russians are undoubted masters of the ! Black Sea, possessing a number of sub-' marines and destroyers, beside mosquito craft. A Russian commentator, Colonel Vassiliev, in a broadcast, said that the

German resistance on the southern and south-western fronts had strengthened noticeably in the last few days, after receiving reinforcements, but that the' Russians were repulsing enemy counter-attacks, fan.d were continuing to .press on.