TWIN OFFENSIVES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25385, 17 November 1943, Page 3

TWIN OFFENSIVES

VAST RUSSIAN FORCES GERMAN POSITIONS MENACED LONDON, Not. 15. Observers express the opinion that the twin Russian offensives in the Ukraine and inside the Dnieper bend menace the German positions more seriously than ever before. The Russians. using vast forces, have also launched major attacks on the Ryechitsa area and along the SmolenskMinsk highway, effectively pinning down German reserves in these northern areas and preventing their transport southwards to buttress the strained German positions against the crushing weight of the Russian offensive. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says that the bulge General Vatutin’s army holds is now 112 miles deep and over 50 miles wide. Formations on the right flank are steadily nearing the great railway junction of Korosten, on the north-south railway, which may be of greater importance than Jitomir. One column is rapidly moving on to Korosten. the fall of which is expected soon. Along the high road from Kiev, the Russian cavalry, fanning out in the plains between the north-south railway and the Pripet Marshes, threatens to cut off Korosten from the north. Forces pushing northward from Jitomir are making a third drive against Korosten.

The line to which the Gzrmans have been forced back from the Pripet Marshes to the mouth of the Dnieper is reckoned about 300 miles longer than the Dnieper-Melitopol-Azov line, where they probably hoped to stabilise the situation. The consequence is that they must be getting somewhat thinned out by now in some parts of the front. Indeed, the speed of Russian > rogress west of Kiev suggests that the German front has been so broken that only the main centres and lines of communication are held, leaving .an empty space between. The Russian box ” beyond Kiev has been enlarged to a solid block of territory stretching 90 miles west of the Dnieper and about the same distance nrrth to south.