NO SIGN OF STOPPAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 64, 13 September 1943, Page 5

NO SIGN OF STOPPAGE

GREAT SOVIET ADVANCE

LONDON, September 12. There is no indication yet that the Germans are able to muster forces ta stop the Russians' great break-through between the central and southern fronts and to halt what one Mcscow correspondent calls "the biggest retreat in military history."

"The Russians are over-running the German defences along a 120-mile froni east of the Dnieper, and are now with* in 30 miles of the only railway from the Crimea.

Reuters Moscow correspondent, sum* ming up the Russians' success, says that the past week has been the great est of the Russian summer offensive, The Red Army in that time has captured 55 major towns and 3000 smallei towns and villages in the area have b^en cleared of the Germans since September 1. This equals one-third of the area of Italy. What was problematical a fortnighi ago now seems probable—the reaching of the great Dnieper bend, Kiev, and Smolensk is in sight. The Germans in the southern Uk< raine continue to fall back everywhere along a wide arc from Kharkov to the Sea of Azov. The Russians are pursuing them hotly and not allowing the enemy time to lay minefields. Advanced Russian units are now 15 miles from Pavlograd. Mobile Soviet detachments are everywhere breaking the German lines and causing complete confusion among the retreating Germans, who now have no organised defence positions before the Dnieper, The German pocket below Kharkov, which was badly pinched by the loss of Barvenkova, is rapidly caving in, The Russians are advancing between Kharkov and Izyum, 30 miles west oi Krasnograd on the road to Poltava. A Moscow communique says the Rus sians in the JNTyejin direction captured the railway station of Pliski. The British United, Press points out thai the capture of Pliski, which H

on the Kursk-Kiev railway, brings th** Russians within 12 miles of the last lateral railway held by the Germans east of Kiev.

This line, which runs south from Gomel through Kruty and then to Kremenchug, is the only railway the Germans have to switch troops north or south on the central sector anywhere near the front. The capture of Pliski means that the Russians have advanced 100 miles towards Kiev in less than a fortnight.