RUSSIAN FRONTS

Grey River Argus, 14 May 1943, Page 5

RUSSIAN FRONTS

No New Moves Reported

GERMANS CLAIM HEAVY RUSSIAN LOSSES LONDON, May 12. Comparative silence continues to cloak the Russian front activities, but the Berlin radio, indicating the scale and intensity of the recent Kuban fighting, claimed that the Russians in the past 12 days had lost nearly 30,000 dead and wounded and also 200 tanks destroyed or seriously damaged. Both sides seem to have confined their major activities in the past 12 hours to hammering each other’s communications and supply bases from the air. The British United Press Moscow correspondent says that there are signs from Leningrad to R.ostov that the spring lull h.as almost ended and that heavy fighting is on the way. More intensified. air activity on each side is taken as a sure sign of impending action. The Germans on land have already thrust against Leningrad, but Russian artillerymen halted and drove back the attackers. The Russians also smashed a German thrust in the Lilichansk sector, but both these actions were on a small scale compared with those of the Kuban, where the Russians continue to pound the German positions before Novorossisk. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent reports that the Russians have begun to infiltrate through holes punched in the German defence system at Novorossisk, but that they have not yet seriously breached the defences. RUSSIAN AIR ACTIVITY RUGBY, May 13. A special Soviet communique states: On Tuesday night the Soviet Air Force carried out raids in large force on railway junctions and railwav stations at Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Briansk, Kharkov, .Orel, Krasnograd, Lozovaya, Barvenkova, Yartsevo and other stations. At the same time our planes attacked columns of lorries on the highways. As a result of the bombing a great number of enemy trains and lorries with troops and army supplies were destroyed or damaged. On the railway stations of Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava and Briansk explosions were observed. The Soviet Air Force also attacked successfully a number of enemy aerodromes.