NO EFFECTIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1944, Page 4

NO EFFECTIVE

♦—- LIKELY BY THE EAST OF BUG & DNIESTER FOUR RUSSIAN ARMIES STRIKING AS ONE (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 1.5 p.m.) LONDON, February 8. The whole of the Russian front is now in a state of disintegration and it looks as though the Germans have no possibility of making an effective stand anywhere east of the Bug and the Dniester. The German Dnieper bridgehead, opposite Nikopol, which the Russians have broken, was their last cn the east bank of the river. The bridgehead was 80 miles wide and 20 deep. With the entire east bank of the Dnieper cleared of Germans, and Kamenka, six miles southwest of Nikopol, captured, it was obvious that the fall of Nikopol, where bitter street fighting was going on, would be practically simultaneous. Nikopol fell less than forty hours after Marshal Stalin announced the opening of General Malinovsky’s 100 mile offensive, launched north-east of Nikopol and Krivoi Rog. General Tolbukhin, who eliminated the German bridgehead opposite Nikopol, is also the hero of Stalingrad, Taganrog, Mariupol and Melitopol. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says the Germans, who are hastily retreating south-westwards, face a tremendous blow from the armies of General Vatutin, Koniev, Mailnovsky and Tolbukhin, striking as one force. The Russians are fast turning the German retreat towards Khferson into a disorderly rout, and the roads along which the Red Army is advancing everywhere show signs of a precipitate flight. They are littered for miles with enemy equipment. The “Izvestia” reports that the German group of five divisions, trapped east of Nikopol, is being liquidated.