Word: vatutin
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Success in Bulk. That was the signal for a general crumbling of what had been for over a year a rigid, unbreakable line. On both Colonel General Golikov's front and that to the south under Nikolai Vatutin, who was last week promoted from Colonel General to Army General, the Reds exploited their advantage. Belgorod fell. So did Lozovaya, Voroshilovsk, Voroshilovgrad, Likhaya. The attackers rolled around Kharkov, which like Kursk had been one of the main fortresses on Germany's great wall of last winter. Russians crept early this week to within seven miles of Kharkov...
...least, if they intended to fight for southern Russia, they might have been expected to stick doggedly to the Donets River line running southeast from Kharkov through Voroshilovgrad. But last week Colonel General Nikolai Vatutin's armies crossed the Donets and captured Izyum on the railway between Kharkov and Rostov. The fall of Izyum meant: 1) that the Red Army had a springboard for a jump toward Dniepropetrovsk 125 miles southwest; 2) that Kharkov was threatened by a pincer arm from the south; 3) that Voroshilovgrad (whose capture was apparently imminent) had in effect been bypassed some 90 miles...
This week one column of Vatutin's army, rolling south, was within 100 miles of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, thereby threatening to block the Wehrmacht's retreat from Rostov. There is a chance that before spring the Wehrmacht may lose all of the rich Donets basin west to the Dnieper River-the last natural defense line inside Russia...
Cavalryman of the Southwest, where one army is moving side-by-side with Golikov's troops toward Kharkov and another is pushing down the railway below Millerovo toward Rostov, is Colonel General Nikolai Vatutin, 42. Another veteran of the Czarist Army and the Revolution, Vatutin was an Army commander in the Ukraine when the Germans invaded it. He skillfully retreated from the Dnei-per Bend, then helped Marshal Timoshenko launch successful counterattacks...