OBSERVER’S VIEW

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 63, 17 March 1943, Page 5

OBSERVER’S VIEW

RED SUCCESSES MORE IMPORTANT Recd. 6 p.m. London, March 15. The victorious Russian drive in the central sector in Russia, where the Red Army’s spearheads are pointing toward four key points in the defences of Smolensk, is still counterbalanced by the grave news from the Ukraine. General Golikov’s troops, fighting desperately against forces which are both numerically superior and are employing far greater weight of armour, appear to be still giving ground in the Kharkov area. Despite the menace the Germans are thus raising to the reconquered portion of the Ukraine, Reuter’s Moscow correspondent, emphasises that

the fighting along the whole front musr be viewed in the right proportion. He says that the German coun-ter-offensive is far less important than the Russian successes further north. The weight of the German offensive has been provided by the use of thousands of escapees from the neighbourhood of Stalingrad, the Caucasus, the Kuban, and the Donetz, who were reformed and re-equipped, and fresh divisions from the west. The Germans possess excellent rail communications to the rear, while the Russians’ communications are tenuous, passing over recent battlefields where there has been iig time to fully organise them. The correspondent says that the Germans are losing heavily in the Donetz push. Simultaneously they are being forced out of the defensive system west of Moscow and sout»i qi Leningrad which they have fortified for IS months. If the Red Army clears out the Germans to behind a line from Velikiyo Luki to Orel, and even if it does not capture Smolensk, it will have achieved what was seemingly impossible last year.

Berlin radio claims that the German success in the south is influencing events on the central and northern sectors, where the Germans more and more are taking the initiative after the transfer of Russian troops to lhe south. The Germans west of Kursk are carrying out extensive movements eastwards.

The Moscow representative of the Columbia Broadcasting System reports that the Germans in thejlast two weeks lost 66,000 killed in theTighting in the Kharkov and Don Basin areas, and 2700 Axis tanks were destroyed or disabled and 455 German planes shot down over the whole front during the same period.