GAP OF ONLY 40 MILES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 11 January 1944, Page 5

GAP OF ONLY 40 MILES

Vatoutin's and Koniev's Armies

TRAP FOR GERMANS IN SMYELA SALIENT

Soviet Drive From Kiev Bulge

London, Jan. 10.

Powerful Red Army forces are driving hard from the Kiev bulge to cut the Odessa-Warsaw railway, the main escape route for Hitler’s crumbling Dnieper bend army, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. Russians are advancing, in two columns on either side of the big junction of Jmerinka, and the southern arm of this drive, which is outflanking the strongly fortified railway junction of Vinnitsa, is now only 27 miles from the Odessa railway. A gap of only 40 miles separates units of Marshal Vatoutin’s and General Koniev’s armies which are driving to trap the Germans in the Smyela salient. General Koniev’s troops, with the capture of Alexandrovka, are a little over 20 miles south-east of Smyela. The Russians are rapidly pincering Jmerinka. All the road communications to the town from the north and east and south-east are severed as the Russian armoured spearhead thrusts forward. This squeeze intensifies the pressure against Germans caught between the Soviet hammer and £nvil in the Smyela salient.

The Red Army is keeping up the heavy and persistent thrusts into the Dnieper bend, where German armies estimated at half a million strong are facing a difficult choice of withdrawal or a growing risk of encirclement. The German radio to-day reports an attempted Russian landing on the Black Sea coast 40 miles east of Odessa. The enemy says the landing was repulsed. There is no information about this from Moscow.