MOSCOW SILENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 January 1944, Page 4

MOSCOW SILENT

REGARDING ADVANCE INTO POLAND VATUTIN’S MAIN DRIVE. INTO UKRAINIAN RAILWAY SYSTEM. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, January 6. Red Army forces which crossed the old Polish border on Tuesday have advanced nearly 35 miles inside Poland, says one report from Moscow, but with Moscow still silent officially regarding any Red Army movements west of Olevsk and Novograd Volynsk across the border. Moscow correspondents dwell on General Vatutin’s concentration on disrupting the Ukrainian railway network stretching from Rovrio to Jmerinka. A British United Press correspondent says some of General Vatutin’s columns are thrusting westwards along the railway from Berdichev to Shepetcvka, with a. view to cutting the northsouth line there, while farther south the Red Army is beating the Germans back along the railway from Berdichev to the important railway junction of Vinnitsa, where the Germans are likely to make their next stand. German forces on the arc between Vinnitsa and Shepetovka are pouring back south-westwards, over dirt roads designed to bear nothing bigger than farmers’ carts. The German resistance south of Berdichev is intense. German tommy-gunners stayed behind and held every house near the Vinnitsa. Highway in an effort to check the advance. The British United Press correspondent points out that each successive step backwards loosens the Germans’ hold on the Ukrainian railways and lessens the enemy’s ability to manoeuvre troops to meet the Russian rail thrusts. The Red Army, on the other hands, depends much less on rail communications. The Russians are accustomed to using other methods of transport.