KARELIAN ISTHMUS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25560, 13 June 1944, Page 5

KARELIAN ISTHMUS

RED ARMY ' OFFENSIVE

FINNISH DEFENCES BREACHED (Rec. 11.45 p.m.) LONDON. June 12. “ The Russians have smashed the first main\ Finnish defence line —the rebuilt Mannerheim fortifications—in the first stage of a new all-out drive to knock Finland out of the war,” says the Moscow correspondent of ttie British United Press. “ Infantry and tanks are pouring through widening gaps in a great drive for Viipuri, under 45 miles distant. The new drive is the first big offensive on the eastern front for nearly seven weeks. “ General Govorov’s columns at some places have reached 50 miles north of Leningrad. His ultimate objective is

apparently to crash Finland out of the war and thus clear his northern flank for a resumption of the expected big drives through the Baltic States-to East Prussia. Warships of the Russian Baltic Fleet are co-operating with the army by pumping streams of shells into the Finnish lines, while Red Air Force bombers are battering the Finnish supply lines.” Reuter’s Moscow correspondent states that the Russians, by launching an offensive against the main Finnish defences in the Karelian

Isthmus, are driving on the shortest route to Helsinki. t “ The hour has struck for Germany’s Finnish satellites,” says the newspaper Pravda. “Germany will not be able to save the Finns from the same fate as awaits Germany and her satellites. Let us finish off the wounded German beast.”

The latest Moscow communique states that four more railway stations in addition to Terijoki have been captured. General Govorov, the commander of the Karelian offensive, is the general who smashed the Mannerheim Line in the Russian-Finnish war of 1939-40, and who, by the same massed artillery tactics, smashed the German siege positions and freed Leningrad in January of this year. A Finnish communique says; “After furious fighting throughout the day and night of June 10 the enemy broke through the western part cf our positions on the Karelian Isthmus. Fighting is continuing without pause.” Reuter’s Stockholm correspondent reported that the Finnish’ radio broadcast an order recalling all men on leave from units in the Karelian Isthmus.

The German News Agency commentator, von Hammer, described operations on the Karelian sector as “fairly big.” He added that the German outposts south-east of Vitebsk had to be withdrawn to the main line owing to Russian attacks. Marshal Stalin, in an order of the day, said: “General Govorov’s troops on the Leningrad front, supported by massed artil’nry and the Red Air Force, went over to the offensive on the Karelian Isthmus cn Saturday. They pierced the Finnish defences, which were strongly fortified and in great depth. In two days of offensive battle the Red Army advanced upwards of 15 miles and breached the Finnish lines to a width of 25 miles. “They captured the town and large railway station of Terijoki, on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, six miles on the Finnish side of the 1939 Rus-sian-Finnish -border, and Yappilae, six miles north-east of Terijoki, besides more than 80 inhabited places.”