UKRAINE UNTENABLE FOR GERMANS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 41, 19 February 1943, Page 5

UKRAINE UNTENABLE FOR GERMANS

IMPORTANCE OF KHARKOV (Special Correspondent—N.Z.P.A.) (Recd. 6.5 p.m.) London, Feb. 17. “The Red Army has won the greatest strategic victory of the war. The fall of Kharkov makes th? whole of the western Ukraine untenable to the Germans.’* “He who holds Kharkov controls the Ukraine. The rapid envelopment and the subsequent fail of a city which last spring so stoutly withstood the Russian offensive is an unmistakable sign of collapsing German morale.’* “By this latest victory our mighty Allies are demonstrating that the impetus of their offensive is far from spent and may yet break finally the Nazis’ aggressive power.” These are comments in London on the fall of Kharkov. It is emphasised that the ciXy controls a network of eight railways and six main roads. Without it the Germans are virtually deprived of communications strong enough to maintain an army east of the Dnieper, and its fall unhinges the whole of their supply position in the centre and the north. Kharkov has a commercial and industrial value in addition to its military value. Its tractor plan previously employed 30,000 operatives and was second only to Stalingrad’s plant. It has also a mammoth agricultural machinery factory and an electrical equipment works. The Russians now have vitual control of the Orel-Cr ; mea railway, which is the most important strategic line along the whole of the Russian front. The opinion is exnressed that the advance from Dnepropetrovsk to Zaporozhe can now be pressed confidently, that a grand scale encirclement in the Donetz Basin is in the process of completion, and that a repetition of the Stalingrad success seems to be within the Russian grasp.