UKRAINE RAILWAYS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25428, 8 January 1944, Page 5

UKRAINE RAILWAYS

GERMAN HOLD LOOSENING VATUTIN’S CONCENTRATION LONDON, Jan. 6. The British United Press points out that each successive step backwards loosens the Germans’ hold on the Ukrainian railways and lessens the enemy’s ability to manoeuvre his troops to meet Russian rail thrusts. The Red Army, on the other hand, depends much less on rail communication. The Russians are accustomed to using other methods of transport.

With Moscow still silent officially regarding any Red Army movements west of Olevsk and Novograd Volynsk, across the border, Moscow correspondents dwell on General Vatutin’s concentration on the disrupting of the Ukrainian railway network stretching from Rovno to Jmerinka. The British United Press says some of General Vatutin's columns are thrusting to the west along the railway from Berdichev to Shepetovka with a view to cutting the north-south line there, while farther south the Red Army is beating the Germans back along the railway from Berdichev to the important junction of Vinnitsa, where the Germans are likely to make their next stand.

German forces, on an arc between Vinnitsa and Shepetovka, are pouring back to the south-west over dirt roads designed to bear nothing bigger than farmers’ carts. ” Enemy resistance south of Berdichev is intense. German tommy-gunners stayed behind and held every house near the Vinnitsa highway in an effort to check the advance. ' The gradual but inexorable loss of communications made the Germans frenziedly cling to the _ important rail centre of Berdichev. Right to the moment of the Russians’ final attack the Germans were building fortifications and bringing up reinforcements. It was only after the Red Army forces fought from street to street that what was left of a once-prosperous farming town was reclaimed. The Red Army column which took Byelaya Tserkov is pushing out to. the south-east in the direction of Cherkasy. The Germans who are entrenched along the west bank of the Dnieper in the Cherkasy region represent a menace to General Vatutin’s left flank, should he advance in the Dnieper bend Reuter’s correspondent cabling from Moscow said General Vatutin is forcing the pace as he drives fleeing Germans south-west of Berdichev. where the enemy’s losses, killed, wounded, and taken prisoners, were unofficially, estimated at 12,000. The Germans are apparently concentrating on the defence of Vinnitsa with the object of holding off the Russians from the Odessa railway. _ . . _ A new Russian offensive in the Propoisk area (White Russia). 120 miles south of Vitebsk, is reported by Berlin radio. The attack is designed to smash the German, bridgehead east of the Dnieper, says the radio. The Russians, after using fog shells and putting up a heavy barrage, attacked with big forces first to the west, then to the north. Fierce battles are going on.