NEW OFFENSIVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 43, 19 August 1943, Page 5

NEW OFFENSIVE

REPORTED FROM BERLIN LONDON, August 18. Berlin radio reports that a big new Russian offensive has started in the central Donets region after a fierce artillery barrage. Moscow sources have not mentioned this drive. The British United Press correspondent points out that if the Berlin story is true, three big Russian drives are now in progress—on the Bryansk, Kharkov, and Izyum fronts. Berlin also reports Russian attacks on the Vyazma and Lake Ladoga sectors.

Russian columns, smashing their way relentlessly against Bryansk and Kharkov, threaten to trap 50 German divisions east of the Dnieper River, in the Donets Basin, the Kuban, and the Crimea, state dispatches from Allied correspondents. One Russian column, carrying out a flanking movement against the Desna River, on which it is believed the Germans on the Bryansk front are likely to attempt a stand, has driven further southwards from Spas Demensk and occupied Degirevo, which is 60 miles north-west of Bryansk. The Moscow correspondent of the British United Press says that further progress by this column would threaten the whole Desna line, and should be watched very closely.

Reuters Moscow correspondent says that three German: panzer divisions which, were battered in the earlier fighting have now been massed to the west of the Russian wedge on the Bryansk - Spas Demensk - Smolensk front.

The Russians in the Bryansk- area cut through the great forest barrier masking Bryansk- in one of the most daring moves of the campaign. This forest stretches east from Bryansk and the Desna River for 20 miles.

One Russian column, which was 15 miles from Bryansk, drove along the railway through the middle of the forest. Three other columns, striking against Bryansk < from the north, north-east, and south-west, are carrying out the classical Russian converging movement.