Word: vatutin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...recapture Kiev, the Russian Supreme Command had picked two of its ablest field commanders: Generals Konstantin Rokossovsky and Nikolai Vatutin. Their armies arrived before Kiev in September, weary after the summer's cruel fighting. For many weeks, they stood in an arc before the city, regained strength, indifferently pounded the enemy defenses...
Reassured, the Wehrmacht pulled some troops out of Kiev, rushed them south to help hold Krivoi Rog. Only then did peasant-faced, tank-wise Vatutin (by now, for unannounced reasons, in full command) give the order to attack. His veteran troopers stood on the heights before Kiev and wept with anger and sorrow at the sight of flames eating through the city. Then, with fury in their hearts, they swept down upon...
Tank spearheads drove through the city, and continued in pursuit. Behind them came the bulk of Vatutin's army, estimated at 300,000. German garrisons of some 150,000 men withdrew before the trap was sprung. In Moscow, the Red Army's newspaper Red Star said proudly: "History has not known such a swift operation...
From Kiev, General Vatutin's army could now plunge directly west into Poland, only 130 miles away. Or it could swerve southwest, to try to set yet another trap for the German forces in the southern Ukraine. The weather in the south was still favorable, the troops fresh, supply lines from the east presumably restored in the past six weeks...
Closer to the Dnieper than Rokossovsky were his teammates, Army Generals Nikolai Vatutin, whose sector hung over Poltava, and Rodion Malinovsky, now almost within gun range of Zaporozhe...