WIDE SWEEP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25427, 7 January 1944, Page 3

WIDE SWEEP

RUSSIANS MOVING FAST ONLY LIGHT RESISTANCE LONDON, Jan. 5. The Moscow correspondent of the British United Press says that the Russians who captured Byelaya Tserkov are already 30 miles, farther on, and are moving fast, apparently, in a wide sweep, to cut off the Germans still on the right bank of the Dnieper between Cherkasy and the area around Kanev. AH the Russian’ thrusts into the Ukraine are meeting relatively light resistance. It appears that the whole German front is here quickly disintegrating. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent reEorts that the rapidly-narrowing gap etween the Russians from Byelaya Tserkov and other Red Army forces from Cherkasy has been reduced to about 60 miles. The southern jaw of the pincers is at Smyela. ToKio official radio, reviewing the. Russian situation, said that the Red Army apparently has superior power, and the situation does not permit of optimism. < Although Moscow has not yet officially announced that the Red Army has ■ crossed the Polish border, Berlin radio’s military commentator Captain Sertorius, to-night tacitly admitted that the Russian forces had reached the border area when he declared that the Germans were preparing a defence line behind the Russian-Polish border. He said: “General Vatutin’s army group advancing beyond Olevsk and Novograd Volynsk will be faced with a new defence line now being constructed.”

Von Mannstein in the past 24 hours has started determined counter-attacks from bases in the Novograd Volynsk area, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The Red Army, however, has beaten back all counter-blows and is again advancing north and south of Novograd Volynsk.. . The Red Army is approaching the Odessa-Cracow-Berlin railway at the rate of 10 miles a day, and it is difficult to see even now how the Germans will be able to move any great proportion of the Dnieper bend armies except through the Bessarabian mountains into Rumania. The Red Army is rapidly sweeping on in all sectors in its south-westerly drive towards the River Bug, according to Red Star. The capturd of Pliska and the deep Red Army tank thrusts into German positions are outflanking the railway junction of Vinnitsa from tl?6 east As General Vatutin’s advance continues on all sectors, says the Moscow correspondent of The Times, reports are coming in of great quantities of booty captured, of whole German units surrendering, of reinforcements arriving to defend places already held by the Russians, and. significantly, of the virtual absence of any air protection for the retreating enemy.