IN STALINO STREETS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 38, 16 February 1943, Page 5

IN STALINO STREETS

ANNOUNCEMENT OF FALL EXPECTED HOURLY (Recd. 11.30 p.m.) London, Feb. 15. According to the Daily Telegraph’s Stockholm correspondent the Russians have broken into Stalino, where street fighting is going on. The announcement of the city’s capture is expected hourly. The Red Army is rapidly following up and harassing the retreating Reichswehr between Rostov and Taganrog, reports Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. Russian long-range guns are pounding the Germans across the 10-mile width of Taganrog Bay. Moscow radio announced that 17 Red Army officers were promoted to major-general. Eight new lieutenantgeneral include Chernyakhovsky, wno led the attack against Kursk, and Colonel-General Malinovski, organiser of the assault against Rostov. Lieuv.General Malinovski, aged 44, fought in France in the last war with the Cossack expeditionary force. The Washington correspondent of the New York Times says that strategists express the opinion that the loss of Rostov, whose importance even exceeds that of Stalingrad, will inevitably force the Nazis to fall back to the Dnieper and will result in the disintegration of the Donetz line, from which Germany launched the 1942 offensive. They point out that such a retreat would probably be accompanied by the withdrawal 6f the northern sector from Leningrad to Latvia.