BATTLES ON THE DNIEPER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 232, 1 October 1943, Page 5

BATTLES ON THE DNIEPER

MORE RED ARMY SUCCESSES BREAKING NAZI RESISTANCE (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copy right i Recd. 9 p.m. London, Sept. 30. Soviet troops in the Kiev area have broken the enemy’s resistance in the bridgehead positions around Darnitsa, about six miles across the river east’of Kiev. The Russians captured the railroad junction of Darnitsa, together with many strongly-fortified German strongpoints on the east bank of the Dnieper, and drove the enemy over the water to the west bank.. An Order of the Day by Marshal Stalin has announced the capture of Kremenchug on the east bank of the Dnieper, and the town of Rudnya, in the direction of Vitebsk. Kremenchug wa» the Germans’ last fortress on the eastern side of the Dnieper. Moscow said that the guns would salute the gallant victors of Kremenchug with 12 salvoes of 124 guns. The order concluded with the words: “Everlasting glory to the heroes who follow the Germans in the defence of their motherland. Death to the German invader. ’ ’

Kremenchug is a key railway junction, witli a population of 60,000 and is a busy industrial centre of the Ukraine timber trade. Rudnya is on the railway between Smolensk and Vitebsk. This new success brings the Russians to within 40 miles of Vitebsk, one of the key towns leading to Minsk. Rudnya was an important communications centre in the enemy defensive system.

A supplementary Moscow communique says that 6000 Germans were killed in the fighting for Darnitsa, which is seven or eight miles east of Kiev, and adds that Soviet troops have now reached the Dnieper immediately fronting Kiev. The capture ot Kremenchug means that except for the smaller bridgeheads opposite Kiev and Zaporozhe, practical;., the whole 300 miles of the eastern river bank between these two places has been cleared of the enemy. These two smaller bridgeheads, north and south of Krmenchug, are being rapidly narrowed by the Soviet forces. Further north the Russians are driving deeper into White Russia. In the area of Mogilev the Red Army advanced from three to six miles and occupied more than 270 places. The Russians are closing in on Gomel, the third of the towns guarding the passage to Minsk. They have advanced from three to six miles and captured more than 170 places, including a town 20 miles north-east, of Gomel. They are already eight miles south-east of the town, and this new success greatly increases the threat to the enemy base.

With two main strongholds to conquer—Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk—the Russians are battling unremittently to make the whole length ot the Dnieper indisputably their own, and the stage is set for the final battle for Kiev, the Germans’ most vital Dnieper line bastion. Strong Red Army forces are massing for the assault against Kiev.

The British United Press Moscow correspondent declares there is not the slightest evidence that the Russians are already attempting to force the Dnieper in the Dnepropetrovsk area or that the railway bridges there have been wrecked. Such reports printed abroad and carried back to Moscow merely make Moscow correspondents laugh. The British United Press adds: “Tile latest available news of the position at Dnepropetrovsk is that the Russians have reached the east bank of the Dnieper above and below the city and have begun mopping up in Dnepropetrovsk’s each bank suburbs, while the Germans are swarming over to the west bank."

M. Manuilshy, a member of the central committee of the Communist Party, speaking over Moscow radio, declared: “The breath of victory is felt. The claim that the German retreat is being made according to plan in order to shorten the line is completely false. Recent operations have actually lengthened the line. The Red Army in the Irlt two months has advanced 260 miles and freed an area of over 115,000 square miles —ten times larger than Belgium.” “The Germans falling back from the rich farmlands of the Ukraine are leaving behind a dead land in which even the birds are nowhere left alive,” says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. “The Red Army is pushing through the wild rose bushes on -the Dnieper bank, marching through orchards of blackened apole-trees where even the little boxes built for starlings to net have been systematically burnt. Acres of ryefields have been flattened not by the trampling feet, of the retreating armies hut by the bodies of Ukrainian peasants forced at machine-gun point to roll on their crops and destroy them when German efforts to fire the crops failed. The Germans are apparently determined to leave a completely lifeless zone between their rearguards and the angry Red Army. Masses of Ukrainian peasants carried off at the last moment by the retreating army were forced to make long treks to the Dnieper, where they were herded into barges with their own cattle and dragged across the river by ropes. Tens of thousands of Russians on the west hank of the Dniener were forced to build new enemy fortifications.”

A Russian correspondent quoted by Reuter says the west bank was cut into a series of vertical terraces peppered with pill-box°s and firingpoints, while the lower bank was saturated with mines. The Russian correspondent concludes: “It is impossible to lay mines all along the Dnieper, and in the autumn the water is noisv and the nights dark. No wonder the Germans on the west Bank are nervous.”