Formidable Russian Offensive

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 28, 3 February 1943, Page 5

Formidable Russian Offensive

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright.) (Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, February 2. With Rostov coming- within range of heavy guns and the Red armies menacing many key points of the German communications, Russia's gigantic winter offensive looks more formidable than at any time since it started in the middle of November.

The Russians are now fast approaching the lines from which the Germans launched the campaign which Hitler declared would be decisive.

r , Moscow correspondents say that the Voronezh offensive threatens to break through behind the Germans on the upper Donets. '

The Russians at Gremyache and Yastrebovka, which are 50 miles apart west of Voronezh, are within 60 miles of Kursk and. are still advancing, destroying German ski troops drawn from the reserves.

To the south the Russians are hourly compressing the arc before Rostov. Their armies are still advancing ir* resistibly, increasingly imperilling 24 Axis divisions which are fighting with their backs to the sea. The enemy are struggling desperately to keep open the Krasnodar-Rostov railway, but parts of. it are of single track, and incapable of rapidly evacuating so many thousands with their equipment Fresh menaces are arising for the Germans in the Caucasian foothills around Tuapse, endangering Novorossisk, while four Russian columns are converging on Krasnodar and collecting considerable booty which the Germans have abandoned. V RED COLUMNS' RACE. * -Reuters Moscow correspondent declares that the Red Army has thrown a" vast ring around Rostov and cut the I southern railway lines from that city | into the Kuban and towards Salsk. j They have also cut the main north line,] to Moscow at Kamenskaya, while the i Capture of Svatovo cuts the north-west-1 crn connection and threatens the two remaining lines connecting Rostov with the rest of Russia via Taganrog and Kharkov. It is now a race between j the Russian columns from the. south and east to be the first to reach Kushchevka, where the last German-held railway from Krasnodar to Rostov joins the main line from Tikhoretsk. When this falls the only way of retfreat for the Germans in the Caucasus will be across the Sea of Azov. *: The "Red Star" quotes a captured German general's declaration that the flower of the Wehrmacht perished at Stalingrad. Many units consisted solely of officers. The bulk of those annihilated were mainly Prussians. A thousand corpses littered the streets, holding up military traffic. Thousands of | ghost-like, frost-bitten prisoners are still emerging from cellars and dugouts, seeking to surrender.