Word: vatutin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Tough Job. If Bagramian takes Vitebsk, he will rank with other Red greats: Konstantin Rokossovsky, now inching toward Vitebsk from the under side; Nikolai Vatutin, fighting in the Kiev bulge, 350 miles to the south; Stalin's pal, Ivan Konev, long stalemated in the Dnieper bend...
...weeks this reckless expenditure of armor kept Moscow worried. The loss of Kharkov in similar circumstances last March was still fresh in everyone's mind; would Kharkov's fate befall Kiev? But by a prodigious effort, General Nikolai Vatutin halted the German advance. As in the summer, Russian artillery won its duel with German armor...
...this desperate game audacity paid fat returns-or ended in disaster. It was audacity which led General Nikolai Vatutin, one of Russia's ablest exponents of blitz warfare, to strike west of Kiev with tanks and horsemen, without adequate infantry or cannon. The muddy roads delayed supplies and reinforcements, but the opportunity to deal the Wehrmacht a finishing blow was too tempting to forgo. Zhitomir fell (TIME, Nov. 22). The cavalry corps which took it seemed poised for a raid into prewar Poland...
...this time audacity's returns were poor. Vatutin had overextended himself, as he did in another crucial offensive west from Kharkov last spring. Without artillery support, the cavalry could not withstand strong German counterattacks. Last week it abandoned Zhitomir, in the first major reverse in the Red Army's great, 18-week offensive. The retreat was has tened by fierce German blows at the Russian flank east of Zhitomir...
...feat, received the coveted Order of Suvorov, First Class) and a tank army under Lieut. General Pavel Rybalko, who won fame in last winter's campaign. So fast were these generals moving (120 miles in nine days) that happy Moscow gave their chief, General Nikolai Vatutin, a fond nickname: Molnya -Lightning...