LATE MESSAGES

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 October 1943, Page 5

LATE MESSAGES

ZAPOROZHE’S CAPTURE. I

(Recd. 11.0 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 15. The fate of the two German armies in the Crimea and the Southern Ukraine is in the balance tonight. The fall of Zaporozhe is likely to be their death knell, says the British United Press Moscow correspondent. The way is now open for the Red Army to turn the Germans’ Melitopol Line and sweep into the steppes to the westward, thereby cutting off the Crimea from the north. The Russians south of Zaporozhe have already twice cut the railway from Sevastopol. This means that the sole remaining route left to the Germans for evacuating their troops from the Crimea is the hast-ily-constructed. railway from Jankoi to Kherson.

The capture of Zaporozhe makes possible a new Red Army drive down the west bank of the Dnieper to Kherson. Another great implication in the capture- of Zaporozhe is the added menace it brings to the Germans in the great Dnieper loop because other Russian forces from Kremenchug are thrusting southwestward and threatening to lop off 20,000 square miles of the Dnieper n n cl Renter’s military writer says the full magnitude of the Russian victory at Zaporozhe may not become apparent for a day or two. It may even be much greater than Stalingrad. H the report is correct that the Russians have already crossed the Dnieper it suggests a serious crack in the German morale. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent reports that the Russians are massing west of Zaporozhe and adds that the Germans in the Crimea risk a trap on the Stalingrad scale. rhe fate of Melitopol, the southern extremity of the German bolt position guarding the Lower Dnieper and the •Crimea, may be said to have been sealed, says the same correspondent.