KHARKOV FALL IMMINENT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 39, 17 February 1943, Page 5

KHARKOV FALL IMMINENT

GERMAN DEFENCES PIERCED RUSSIAN PINCER MOVEMENT (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright! . (Recd. 6.35 p.m.) London, Feb. 16. While the fall of Kharkov apparently is imminent, the Russians have begun a pincer movement designed to entrap the Germans eastward of the line between . Stalino and Mariupol. Russian columns which captured Krasnoarmeysk are advancing toward the Sea of Azov, and the power- . ful Red Armies freed from Rostov are thrusting toward Taganrog. Moscow correspondents emphasise that the disintegration of the Germans in the Donetz Basin is at present more spectacular even than the struggle for Kharkov. The German armies to the south are being compressed and menaced by another Stalingrad debacle, and their only way of escape is being hourly restricted. A German retreat in this region must be along the coast road , to Taganrog, or by a circuitous single-track railway via Stalino or the Dneiper, both of which either the Red Air Force is constantly bombing or long-range artillery is bombarding. A proportion of ' the Germans will certainly eseape, but the Nazis must abandon immense nuantitips nf hpavv pnuinmpnt.

The German news agency’s military commentator, broadcast ing to-night, confessed that nol only had Rostov and Voroshilovgrad been evacuated, but the whole area between them. “The new German line is two-thirds shorter than the old one,” he said. Besides the growing threat to Kharkov, from which the Russians are five miles distant, General Golikov’s men, after the capture of Kursk, are steadily working westward. Furthermore, the Germans are nervous regarding a renewed Russian thrust in the central sectors. Late last night Berlin radio announced that the Russians, after a battle lasting several hours and waged with grim ferocity, breach',! the German lines at Kharkov. German tanks were immediately hurled into a counter-attack. The commentator did not state whether the Germans closed the gap. The radio added that the Russians penetrated the front south-east of Leningrad but the penetration was immediately sealed off. The midnight Russian communique reports the capture ot a railway station 40 miles north-eeut of Stalino snd villages 45 miles north-west of laganrog on the railway to Stalino. Russian warships in the Barents Sea sank two transports totalling