STEADY PROGRESS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 February 1944, Page 3

STEADY PROGRESS

BY RUSSIAN ARMIES NEARING PSKOV Many More Places Captured GERMANS THROWING IN RESERVES / ORDERS TO HOLD CITY AT ALL COSTS

LONDON, February 28. The Russian armies are making steady progress in their northern offensive. In today’s fighting they have captured more than 700 places along the 100 mile front from near Pskov towards White Russia. Most of these places were taken in the drive on Pskov itself. Red Army columns advancing down the railway from the north-east were only 11 miles from rhe city a dusk tonight. An earlier report placed another column closing in on Pskov from the north at about the same distance. The Germans are flinging in more reserves and the German garrison at Pskov has had a special order from Herr Hitler, I is usual one to his troops in tight places, to hold out at all costs. Moscow reports that near Luck, more than 80 miles inside the 1939 Polish frontier, German counter-attacks have been beaten back. After the Red Army had made a crosisng over the Styr River, the Germans attacked, but the Russians counterattacked and pushed the Nazis far beyond their starting point, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. In the Dnieper bend, the Russians have begun a new drive on Kherson and Nikolaev and have thrown the Germans out of important positions along' the western bank of the Dnieper.