Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY. APRIL 10, 1945 RUSSIAN POLITICAL STRATEGY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 10 April 1945, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY. APRIL 10, 1945 RUSSIAN POLITICAL STRATEGY

THE arrival of the Russian armies in Vienna draws attention to the circuitous route by which they have come there. A slow', difficult and costly advance has been made 1 over the Transylvanian Alps, through the uplands, then across the rivers and plains of Hungary, to follow the Danube to Bratislava and now Vienna. It is a well-worn route of entry to southern Germany and there was a time when the longest way round promised to be the quickest way to Berlin. While Zhukov has been standing less than 30 miles from the German capital since his capture of Kustrin in mid-March the Russians have put most energy into the campaigns in the south-east and the Germans have sacrificed much on other fronts in order to contest Red Army progress towards Vienna and beyond. It may be said that the method is the one dictated by Soviet military strategy. To a large extent this is true. The danger of a Nazi mountain core of resistance needs to be dealt with in anticipation but the technique Russia is practising also has a significant political aspect. She is moving towards the complete defeat of Germany in conjunction with her allies, yet in a peculiarly deliberate way of her own. Armies are the instruments of political policy; Russia has a habit of using them to implement her foreign policy and shows a strong inclination to back up the consequences of her political steps by armed force as well as employing it to prepare the way for them. Broadly her policy—consistently pursued—is to make the western borders of the Soviet Union permanently secure and to enhance the prestige and influence of Russia as leader in central and south-eastern Europe. Ever since the war was forced upon her she has been prepared to pay the price necessary to do that job properly and cannot be blamed for such constancy of aim. With the capture of Vienna there will be a string of European capitals which have been liberated mainly or entirely by Soviet arms: Belgrade, Warsaw, those in the Baltic States. Budapest and Vienna. Prague has high hopes. Bucharest and Sofia are in a different category,' as also is Helsinki, but all the countries whose capitals are named have been gathered more closely within the or-

bit of the Kremlin, some of them unwillingly and others principally because they have a debt to Soviet military power to discharge. The Russian sphere of influence in Europe is unquestionably assuming definite shape as the result of studied and purposeful Soviet efforts. Russia seeks to be the architect of the new. Poland but not to incorporate her. The spilling of Red Army blood in Vienna is accompanied by an assurance from Moscow that there is no intention of swallowing up Austria or of meddling in her domestic affairs. Russia asked as long ago as the Moscow conference of 1943 that Austria be restored to independence and Britain and America agreed. The provisional Government set up on Czechoslovakian soil is also under the guiding hand of the Soviet whose foreign policy is clearly mirrored in nearly every one of her recent military and political acts.