TIRELESS BLOWS

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22201, 19 February 1942, Page 5

TIRELESS BLOWS

Vigour Of Russian Advance Striking Successes By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Rec. 2.20 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 18. A phrase in the Russian communiques that “our advance continues” gains significance as unofficial reports come in of striking successes on the central front and the Kalinin front. The vigour and weight of the Russian advance shows no signs of slackening. The Russians are waging war against the main lines of communication and the possession of large intervening areas is left in doubt because they are practically inaccessible. This explains why the Germans still hold important towns where all around the Russians are poised. The Germans, with their supply lines gravely menanced, if not interrupted, and with little opportunity of replenishing locally from the sullen peasantry, do not constitute a serious threat to the Russian positions. Advanced Russian cavalry units yesterday cut the Pskov-Vitebsk railway near the Drissa River. They destroyed six miles of it and are now within 30 miles of the old Latvian frontier, says the correspondent of the “Daily Express.” Several cavalry divisions which carried out this thrust pierced the German lines about 30 miles south-west of Velikiye Luki. Reports from Vichy say that the Russians have entered Novgorod. The Russians on the central front have captured the town of Stiar, 36 miles north-east of Briank, capturing 71 guns and more than 1000 trucks and lorries. According to the Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” the Russians are hammering and hacking the German arc around Leningrad and appear to be making real progress. They are now in the process of relieving Leningrad by the corridor they have hewn through the deeply and densely strengthened German zone. Authorised spokesmen in Berlin reveal anxiety about the effect of these tireless Russian blows which appear to be wearing down the German resistance, notwithstanding reinforcements from Estonia. A German communique admits that the Russians have broken through 50 miles south-east of Viazma and this news is followed to-night by a statement from the Berlin radio that large German forces have been transferred from the Orel sector to the RjievViazma front. A German officer captured in the Orel sector is quoted in “Izvestia” as saying that the German forces were preparing to leave Kharkov, the industrial centre of the Ukraine.