FACING DISASTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25430, 11 January 1944, Page 3

FACING DISASTER

ENEMY IN DNIEPER BEND GREAT EVENTS LOOMING RUGBY, Jan. 9. The new Russian break-through on a 75-mile front in the middle of the Dnieper bend threatens to accelerate the disaster which already was beginning to stare the German armies in the face. The sector where that disaster threatens is still in a direction from Kiev towards Northern Rumania. Here the advance -has been broadened to well over 100 miles from the Dnieper, near Kanev, to the approaches of Vinnitsa. In the last two days the Russians made some 15 miles’ progress east of Vinnitsa, and are within 10 miles east of that place. Ilyintsi, which they captured, is 35 miles east and slightly south of Vinnitsa. The vital railway from Germany through Southern Poland to Southern Russia is therefore under 25 miles ahead. Directly south of Kiev the Russians are within 30 miles north-west and north of Uman. The westward drive on the northern flank has almost reached the Sarny rail junction by the capture of Czudel, eight miles southeast. North-west of Gorodinitsa the Russians are 12 miles across the 1939 Polish frontier. Hardly anywhere has there been any slackening of the pace of the offensive. All the carefully shored up Dnieper bend front, with its dangerous salients and unmilitary-looking angles, has collapsed in the centre and weakest part It is scarcely conceivable in these circumstances that Russia does not stand on the eve of great events. To bolster up prestige and keep the enemy from the Balkans, the German, High Command took very big risks in South Russia. There is no indication that the German armies there are anything like trapped, but at any rate something greater than another deteat seems in store for them. One well-informed London commentator considers that the German decision to stand in the Dnieper bend regardless of consequences will compel von Mannstein to choose between defending Southern Poland and defending Rumania, and that the Russians intend to compel him to choose the Rumanian alternative, leaving a g2p of 200 miles between the Pripet. Marshes and the Carpathians. » Assuming that the Germans retreat from the Lower Dnieper, they will presumably now have no alternative but to do so towards Rumania, relying chiefly on the mediocre railway across the Dniester, where the front would be deviously supplied through Hungary. The most immediate and crucial question is whether the Germans, while holding at Vinnitsa, are able soon to amass sufficient reserves to deliver another counter-offensive from Rovno and Tarnopol along the main railways eastwards.