NO SLACKENING

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIV, Issue 29, 3 January 1944, Page 5

NO SLACKENING

GREAT SOVIET OFFENSIVE

THREAT TO ENEMY GROWS

LONDON, Jan. 2

There is no sign of a slackening of the great Russian offensive west of Kiev, and the Red Armv vesterday won back another 800 square miles of territory. The Russians recaptured Jitnmir on Friday. It yas taken bv the Russians in their earlier drive, but they lost it to tli o Germans when the enemy counter-attacked. Jitomir is an important town on the north-south railway. The Russians have pushed on and* are now 30 miles west of Jitomir, and only about 25 miles from the Polish border.

\ Moscow correspondent says that the Russians in the last 10 days have recaptured 7000 square miles or terntory and are still surging forward. Each day’s new fighting is adding a belt of country 10 .miles wide, and the areas released is increasing as the front is being lengthened by the Russians. When their offensive was launched it was on a 50-mile front but that lias been extended until it is now five times as long. So deep and many are the Russian penetrations, says the correspondent, that the Germans cannot concentrate sufficient force to stop the Red Army. There are few Russian towns of any size left in German hands west of Jitomir. hut the aim of the Russians is not so much to capture towns as to reach positions that will threaten the Germans with disaster. The Nam position is growing more serious in the Dnieper Bend where the Russians am now less than 20 miles from the important railway running through Vennitsa and not more than 40 miles from a second railway of importance to the enemy. If those lines fall to the Russians the German positions in the Dnieper Bend will be untenable. , _ , . In White Russia, the Red Armv is making good progress towards lolotsk and is threatening to roll up the German defences in the Leningrad area.