KEY MOVES IN TRAIN

Southland Times, Issue 25328, 1 April 1944, Page 5

KEY MOVES IN TRAIN

RUSSIAN DRIVE ON BALKANS ZHUKOV AIMS FOR TARTAR GAP (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, March 30. Key moves in the RussianGerman war are now being made, says the British United Press Moscow correspondent. The newspaper Red Star says: “The importance of the capture of Kolomyja is difficult to overestimate. Kolomyja is one of the most important centres in the whole area beyond the Dniester.” The correspondent adds that Marshal Zhukov is striking for the Tartar Gap in the Carpathians. The road to the gap starts climbing up from Kolomyja and here the Red Army threatens to penetrate the mountain barrier that Hitler hopes will guard his inner fortress. Marshal Zhukov’s men, tonight, are 25 miles from the Gap, through which a railway, road and river all run. The whole drive in this little corner of the Balkans is fraught with enormous consequences. Mashal Zhukov is astride Hitler’s vital communication lines east of the Carpathians through swamping Kolomyja and Cernauti. Marshal Zhukov not only points the way to where he may burst into the Balkans, but has cut the Axis armies east of the Balkans in two. German units in Bessarabia must now turn south to escape to Germany, because the whole of their positions in that area are disintegrating. The Germans north of Cernauti are being pressed back towards StanislWow and Lwow. POSITION HAS DETERIORATED The German position in the Odessa region in the past 24 hours has seriously deteriorated. Marshal Koniev s forces have occupied points 12 miles above the Tyraspol-Jassy line, which is one of the two last railway retreat lines the Germans have in the south. The Times Moscow correspondent says that probably the most important news from the Odessa region is the fact that the steppes east and north of Odessa are drying, which would greatly alleviate the Red Army’s transport and supply problems. The British United Press Stockholm correspondent says that the German High Command spokesman at a press conference in Berlin admitted that the German line in Russia was flow west of Kowel, Tarnopol and Brody and added that further extensive withdrawals on the eastern front were likely. The German Overseas News Agency’s commentator, Olberg, admitted that the southern part of the German front in Russia was being cut up in separate pieces. “The front is loosening into a number of independent fighting groups,” he said.