NEW SOVIET OFFENSIVE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIII, Issue 23, 26 December 1942, Page 5

NEW SOVIET OFFENSIVE

MORE PROGRESS ON DON LONDON, Dec. 25. The Bussians have launched another offensive, this time in the Northern Caucasus, where they claim to have advanced more than 15 miles and released a number of places. Though the new Russian advance is not on anything like the scale of the Middle Don offensive, where the Soviet forces have made further gains, it will make things more difficult for the Germans who recently sent troops from the Caucasus to assist in the efEort to relieve the army entrapped in the Stalingrad pocket.

Most of the news is from the Middlo Don, where the Soviet advance continues without any sign of the Germans being able to hold it. So far the Russians have averaged about 15 miles a day. Reports state that the important town of Millerovo is being further threatened. The Russians to the north are Said to he 22 miles from Millerovo, but the forces approaching from the east arc believed to be much closer. The Russians have captured a town GO miles south-east of Millerovo, and this brings them to only 100 miles'as the crow flies from Rostov, the key city to the Caucasus. In Stalingrad there has been further fierce fighting in the factory area and north-west and south-west of the city. All the German attacks have been held. The Russians also held the German counter-attacks in the central sector, and in one engagement they crippled 19 enemy tanks.