150-MILE SICKLE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 43, 19 August 1943, Page 6

150-MILE SICKLE

SOVIET BATTLEFRONT

TWO PRINCIPAL DRIVES

By Telegraph—Press association—-Copyright.) Rec. 2 p.m. LONDON, August 19. v Commenting,-. on the fighting on the -Bryansk front, .Reuter's* correspondent says that the offensive is developing satisfactorily. The Russians are now attacking along the whole of a sickleshaped front 150 miles long, stretching from Demensk in the north to Sevsk, which is at the upper corner of the original Kursk salient. In the south ■the Russians' giant sickle is moving steadily forward, cutting its way through great tracts of forest. The centre isv.only.:, twelve miles from Bryansk. At both tips of ■ the sickle the Russians are splitting up and developing secondary threats at the network of communications radiating from Bryansk. In the north Russian forces which are converging from Demensk and Zhizdra are now threatening Lyudinovo, 45 miles north of Bryansk. Lyudinovo is a local railhead and junction of two highways running to Vyazma and Sukhinichi. The Russians in the south are developing a double threat to the BryanskKharkov railway. One Red Army force is within five miles of Nablya, at the ■- junction of the Kharkov and Konotop lines, and the second,. further south, threatens to cut the railway at a second point. T^he correspondent concludes that the Red = Army's vast offensive has'resolved itself into two huge battles — one for Kharkov and towards the Dnieper, and the other for Bryansk and towards the Dnieper. The whole operation involves, nearly threequarters of a million men on both sides. Moscow's mood is resolutely confident, but it is recognised that the issue is far from decided.