THIRTY-MILE MARGIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 23, 28 January 1944, Page 5

THIRTY-MILE MARGIN

RELIEF 0E LENINGRAD

iFtec. 11.30 a.m. RUGBY, Jan. 27. The Germans,, having spent over two years less than half a dozen miles from Leningrad, have now been driven south and west to a distance of about 30 miles from the centre of the city, and south-west nearly 40 miles. They have thus lost all their elaborately-for-tified centres of resistance south and south-west of Leningrad. Only to the south-east is there a remaining line of German bastions along the Moscow railway. These, to which the Germans have lately fallen back, are Tosno, Lyuban, and ' Chudoyo. Already, however, Tosno is closely invested from west and east, and the Russians have captured much of the railway connecting the three places. How far from Novgorod the Russians have fanned out it is difficult to estimate owing to the absence of inhabited places in this desolate, wooded area. ' DIRECTION OF RAILWAYS. "West of Lake Ilmeh two main railways run south from Leningrad, one

to Dno and the other through Luga to Pskov. It does not appear, however, that these are yet threatened. The German line thus still forms a not very deep salient with its shoulders' south-west of Krasnogvardeisk and west of Novgorod. Further operations in this area cannot be predicted, especially as a local thaw is reported. The Russians have, in any case, disengaged the Leningrad stranglehold.—n 8.0. W.