SPRING OFFENSIVE

Grey River Argus, 27 April 1942, Page 5

SPRING OFFENSIVE

A START IN RUSSIA ?

Heavy Fighting

ALONG CENTRAL FRONT.

LONDON, April 23 .

The latest Russian communique again reports that no significant change has taken, place on the Eastern Front. The ground / conditions are still making large-scale attacks impossible, except perhaps in tne extreme south, and the fighting is confined to local actions.

Great activity has been reported behind both the Russian and German lines in the past few days, especially railway, as troops and material are hastily being moved forward for the expected Titanic battles, says “The Times’s” Stockholm correspondent. German sources mention the daily bombing of the Rusjsjan rear (concentrations, but apparently this is sporadic, doubtless because the aerodromes are still waterlogged. (Rec. 9.20). LONDON, April 25. The Russian communique reports that there has been no important changes at the front. On Thursday the Germans lost twenty-five planes. The Russians lost eleven. On Friday sixty-eight German aircraft were destroyed in combat and on the ground. The Russian loss was ten planes. A Russian communique issued on Saturday stated Russian warships in the Barents Sea sank a twelve,-thousand-ton merchantman. A Russian communique states: German planes raided Leningrad in daylight on Friday and on Saturday. Twenty-five of the raiders were shot down, fifteen being destroyed by anti-aircraft fire.

,A‘ report from Kuibyshev, the Soviet capital, states:—After a pitched battle, Russian forces have broken through German front line defences near Bryansk. Fierce fighting is now’ progressing inside the Bryansk defence belt. Another Kuibyshev report says: One special Soviet raiding battalion operating in the enemy’s rear killed 2,070 Germans during thirty-six night raids on the south-western front. Russian forces on the Smolensk front smashed across a river holding up their advance, and pierced German fortifications on the other side. Russian forces also launched a big thrust near Kursk, possibly with the object, says a Moscow report, of outflanking the city’s defences. The German radio admitted Russians had scored local successes in fierce fighting along the KurskKharkov railway. (Rec. 9.20). LONDON, April 25. The Vichy radio announced: The German spring offensive in Russia, has already been begun. There are ceaseless attacks and counter-at-tacks on the central front. There are violent battles occurring in the Bryansk and the Kharkov sectors. “The Times” Stockholm correspondent says: The Russian advance on the Svir River front, on the Finnish front, has largely been halted. This is a result of a rapid thaw rather than of the enemy opposition. Little further activity can be expected at present. Activity in the Donets Basin supports the view that the Germans are preparing one of their main thrusts to below’ Kharkov. The Rnussians and Germans for a long stretch are lined up on the respective banks of the Donets, from whlich the ice has disappeared, and each side is already attempting to reconnoitre or raid the opoosite bank, in river craft. Soviet craft now ply on the shallow Sea of Azov, whence at least one small raid was made this week, west of Taganrog. The Crimea has become more active with renewed Russian attacks .from the Kerch Peninsula. Fierce fighting here is inevitable, as the German plans for the Caucasus must include the expulsion of the Russians again across the Kerch Straits. M. Lozovsky declined to give the the number of Soviet reserves, but said they were sufficient to crush Hitler. , ™ • The Soviet Ambassador (M. Maisky), speaking at the unveiling of a best of Lenin in London, said that Hitlerite Germany must be smashed. M Maisky said that the Soviet people would do their duty to the end, and he believed that the combined efforts of the Allies would bring a decisive turn in events m 1942. Britain, the Soviet the United States, and their Allies were united to smash Hitlerite Germany. They must, and would, do so. The Moscow radio says that Norwegian guerrillas, operating in northern Norway, are receiving the support of the entire population. Patriots are cutting German communications between Norway and Finland, and are using arms captured from the Germans. They killed 400 in the past three months. The Germans are forced strongly to escort supply convoys. One guerrilla band blew up a bridge over the Karas River, while German artillery was crossing.

(Rec. 7.0). LONDON, April 25. A report from Stockholm says: For four days German divebombers have been trying to smash a Russian iron ring round Staraya Russa. There has been a German offensive southwards of Lake Ilmen. It is designed, primarily, to relieve the Sixteenth Army in Staraya Russa, but military authorities in Moscow paign. . , „ regard attacks as the beginning oi the overture to a German summer offensive. . Moscow claims the Russians still retain air supremacy, while it says it is particularlv noticeable that 'the Luftwaffe’s striking power has diminished compared with last June _ On the other hand, the Berlin spokesman has declared that units of the trapped Sixteenth .Army fr° m Staraya Russa have pierced the Rus'sian lines and have again estabiisnea contact with the main German forces. The Moscow radio reported heavy German ''counter-attacks supported by tanks and planes. These, it says, are being unsuccessfully launched on the central front . m effort to relieve mces.iant Russian pressure, but tnac in spite of flooded rivers and impassable roads, Russian forces continue to fight offensive actions. Moscow “Pravda 1 ” comments that thousands of unsuspected enemy corpses and mountains of abandoned equipment are being uncovered by the. thaw. “Pravda” estimates the German losses at fifty thousand weekly throughout the winter camP ai^n - There has been morenntense activity from Russian partisan raiders recently, particularly around Bryansk, thence to Orel, which, coupled with the direct operations, has pered the German supplies to both the semi- 1 beleaguered towns. ihe Germans describe the troops in this area as wading through porridgelike mud, sometimes to the top of their hips.

(Rec. 11.25). LONDON, April 25. Major-General Bethold, Commander of a German Infantry Division, was killed on the central front m Russia. ! : ......