OMINOUS REPORTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1944, Page 5

OMINOUS REPORTS

COLLAPSE OF GERMANS

■; LONDON, January 5. As General Vatutin's advance continues in all sectors, says the Moscow correspondent of "The Times," reports are coming in of great quantities of booty being captured, of whole German units surrendering, of reinforcements arriving to defend places already held by the Russians, and, significantly of the virtual absence of any air protection for the retreating enemy. * Nothing official has come from Moscow to support the reports that the Red Army has crossed the Polish border. Front-line dispatches published in the Moscow morning newspapers have not mentioned any crossing of the frontier, but Carl Goffman, a Russian." commentator, during a broadcast tribute to the Anglo-American air forces' part in Russia's victories, said: "Soviet troops are fighting on Polish soil, and the Germans are still retreating." The Moscow correspondent of the British United Press says that the Russians who captured Belaya Tserkov are already 30 miles further on and are moving fast, apparently in a wide sweep to cut off the Germans who are still on the right bank of the Dnieper between Cherkasi and the area round Kanev. ' ' -

All the Russians' thrusts into the Ukraine are meeting with relatively light resistance, and it appears that the whole of the German front here is quickly disintegrating. Reuters correspondent reports that the rapidly-narrowing gap between the Russians from Belaya Tserkov and the other Red Arr.y forces at Cherkasi has been reduced to about 60 miles. The southern jaw of the pincer is at Smela.

Tokio official radio, reviewing the Russian situation, said: "The Red Army apparently has superior power. The situation does not permit of optimism."