ON DNIEPER ROAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1943, Page 7

ON DNIEPER ROAD

ADVANCE OF RED ARMY

LAST BIG STRONGHOLD GONE (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) Rec. 12.15 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 23. With the capture of Poltava the Russians have eliminated the last great German strong-point barring their progress towards the Dnieper on the front fom Chernigov to Pavlograd. Moscow correspondents, emphasising the importance of the capture, point out that, with the Russians astride the Poltava-Kremenchug railway, only a single narrow road is available for moving the German troops back to the Dnieper from Poltava.

The British United Press says that the fate of the German armies in the Poltava area depends on whether they can outrace the Russians to Kremenchug. If they cannot, large German forces may be trapped, because considerable reinforcements were tnrown in to retain, Poltava.

Today's German communique states that Poltava was abandoned according to plan after the destruction of all installations.

The Red Army, in its great drive against the Dnieper, is liberating towns and villages at the rate of 40 an hour, says Reuters Moscow correspondent.

Russian shells are now whistling over the Dnieper to the high western

bank as the Russian vanguards drive spearheads to the river below Kiev and against the centre of the great Dnieper bend. The great Ukraine offensive has developed into a rapid investment of the Dnieper bridgehead cities of Kiev, Kremenchug, Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhe.

FIGHT FOR CROSSING.

The stage is now set for a battle lor the preliminary crossing of the Dnieper itself. The Russians have 350 miles of the river from which to choose crossing places. The Germans are desperately resisting as the battle nears the Dnieper. The enemy has covered all the roads, approaches, and bridgeheads with massed cannon and mortar batteries. The Russians to the north have increased the threat to Smolensk by the capture of Unecha, a vital junction on the Gomel-Bryansk railway, from which the Russians may eventually be able to outflank Smolensk from the south. The Germans are being inexorably expelled from the Kuban, says "The Times" Stockholm correspondent. The majority are escaping to the Crimea by air, some in small craft from the Temryuk and Taman Bays, a few by the funicular railway across the Kerch Straits.

If reports are true, Melitopol is almost isolated. An exciting race must develop to cut off the German retreat through the Perekop Isthmus.

MANY PEOPLE SAVED,

N The swiftness of the Russian advances prevented the deportation of thousands of inhabitants. Everywhere along the front the Red Army is encountering columns of peasants herded to the side of the roads along which the Germans retreated.

The Germans poured fuel over the grain fields and fired them, they polluted wells by throwing in the carcasses of cats and dogs, and even the bodies of executed peasants.

Tonight's Soviet communique reports a total of 860 inhabited places occupied in advances varying from three to thirteen miles on all fronts. In the Kremenchug sector the large .inhabited locality of Semenovka was taken. Gogolev on the Kiev front, Pachina in the Smolensk sector, and the large locality of Ozanovo, 10 miles north-east of Smolensk, were also captured. Heavy fighting is occurring north and south of Poltava, says Paris radio. The German reconnaissance has reported Russian concentrations east of the Zap'orozhe-Melitopol line, indicating an imminent flare-up of the Russian push in this sector. Reuters Moscow correspondent says that massed Russian bombers, after dawn today, carried out attacks' on bridges in the Dnieper Bend. The Russian armies at present are taking up their final positions for the onslaught on Zaporozhe and Dnepropetrovsk.