MAY QUIT RUSSIA

Evening Star, Issue 25068, 8 January 1944, Page 5

MAY QUIT RUSSIA

ALLEGED GERMAN STATEMENT THEIR SOUTH FRONT HOPELESSLY BROKEN flllec. 12.40 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 7. The German spokesman is quoted bv the Stockholm ' Svenska Morgenbladet's' Bejjm correspondent as saying that is a possibility, what the German army will be forced to withdraw entirely from Russia in face of what appears to be a giant Russian offensive along the whole front from Leningrad to the Black Sea. The correspondent adds: " But -the Nazis over-empha-sise their difficulties sometimes, so that if they achieve a successful counterstroke they can claim that it was accomplished against overwhelming odds."

The British United Press reports tfliat one of General Vatntin's columns, moving west from Rokitno, is already within 25 miles of Sarny, where the railways from Leningrad, Riga, Warsaw, and Vilna converge. "Other parts of his force have mopped up 30 miles of the Korosten-Saruy railway as far as Gorodnitsa. General Vatutin meanwhile is consolidating the Rod army's advance in the Ukraine behind the spearhead

piercing Poland. The Russians in the Ukraine are 'maintaining three drives —first, pushing on along the railway from Berdichev to Shepetovka, which is the key position for a direct, drive against Rovno; secondly, thrusting towards Vinnitsa and Merinka, which are the key to -the Germans' supply system in the area they still hold in South Russia; thirdly, curling back from Byelaya Tserkov south-eastwards towards the Cherkassy region, where the 10 German divisions on the west bank of the Dnieper, if they' hold their ground, run grave risk of encirclement. The enemy's Ukraine defences are now hopelessly broken. The Germans are sufferina huge losses, and, ill-equipped to fight a winter campaign, are falling back along a 200-mile front. The magnitude of the German' losses is more apparent with every 1 mile of Russian advance. The enemy's armoured forces are suffering terrible blows.