SOVIET REPORTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 June 1942, Page 3

SOVIET REPORTS

MANY ATTACKS REPELLED AT SEBASTOPOL NUMEROUS ENEMY TANKS DESTROYED. GERMAN MASSED AIR ASSAULT IN KHARKOV AREA. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, June 13. A Russian communique states that on the Kharkov front yesterday Russian troops fought against enemy tanks and infantry and repelled enemy attacking troops. On the Sebastopol front the Russians successfully repelled numerous’ enemy attacks add held their positions. On other fronts fighting of local importance and activity by reconnaissance units took place. One Soviet naval unit sank an enemy transport of 6000 tons off Odessa. The latest reports from Sebastopol state that the position of the Russians has improved after a series of counterattacks in which the Germans were flung back from a number of points. The enemy are said to have maintained one wedge in a small sector at enormous cost. The Moscow “Red Star” says that the Kharkov zone is at present the scene of the heaviest fighting in Russia this year. The enemy is hurling in fresh masses of infantry, tanks and planes seeking to breach the Russian defences at the narrowest sector, but the Russians are maintaining their positions practically everywhere. The importance which the Germans attach to the new fighting on the Kharkov front can be gauged from Moscow messages describing how in one sector an enemy attack by tanks was supported by 1000 planes’ in waves. This is considered in Moscow as a strong enemy attempt to paralyse the Russian air force and drive the Russian tanks from the battlefield. The German air assault was followed by a tank charge, but the tanks were met by deadly fire from Soviet tanks, artillery, anti-tank rifles and bottles of inflammable liquid, and the enemy suffered heavy losses. In another sector of the Kharkov front 60 enemy tanks were destroyed yesterday. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” said yesterday that heavy clashes between detachments which were striving to probe their opponents’' strength were occurring in the Khar-kov-Donetz region. A hard general battle was expected to be resumed here, but reports of a large-scale German offensive were premature and inflated.

Moscow officially announced that on Friday the Russians at Sebastopol destroyed 50 enemy tanks and put out of action a further 12. Moscow radio gave descriptions of important guerilla activities in support of the hard-pressed defenders of Sebastopol. Pro-Russian sources yesterday were obviously impressed by the immense Axis forces arrayed on the arc spanning Sebastopol’s relatively small area from sea to sea, and expressed the belief that they must eventually wear down any fortress. Operations in the Lake Ilmen and in the Volkhov region beyond appear to be gaining in scope. The Russians are throwing in heavier units than the Germans, including tanks, particularly in the sector in the vicinity of Novgorod. The central front is relatively quiet, but the Germans betray uneasiness about the Volkhonsky forest, between Kalinin and Velikiyeluki, for they have had evidence that unusual Russian forces have long been massing there. A German communique yesterday claimed that the Germans on Thursday occupied a wide strip of territory in the Volkhov sector.

GERMAN WOUNDED FARING BADLY IN RUSSIA. SLOW PROGRESS OF AMBULANCE TRAINS. LONDON. June 13. A Moscow message states that German ambulance trains sometimes take as long as three weeks to travel from Smolensk to Warsaw. One train recently arrived with only 280 out of 400 men alive because they did not receive medical attention en route.