Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 March 1919 — REDS SEIZE UKRAINE [ARTICLE]

REDS SEIZE UKRAINE

FRENCH ARMY IN FLIGHT AFTER HEAVY BATTLE. Bolohevlki Lose 8,000 Men In Fight, But Force the Alllee to Retire. London, March 21.—-Virtually all of the Ukraine is now in the hands of the bolshevik!, according to advices reaching London. In heavy fighting at Nikolniev, northeast of Odessa, the bolshevik! lost between 5,000 and 8,000 men, but forced the French garrison, after fierce lighting, to draw to Odessa. x Further east, the advices qdd. the bolshevik! have reached the Isthmus of Perekop leading to the Crimea. The bolshevik! apparently are en gpged In a strong effort to subdue Russian opposition in the Ukraine nnfl to drive allied forces from that region before spring. The Ukraine la tho granary of Russia, and Odessa before the war was the greatest grain shipping i>ort in Russia. If the bolshevik! cun control the great agricultural region of the Ukraine they might be able to relieve the serious food shortage in Moscow and the North. Aided by Ukrainian bolshevik forces, tioops of the Moscow government In the last three weeks have occupied Kiev and Zhitomir in the center of the Ukraine, and driven the peasant government of General Petlura from Kiev to’ Winnitza and thence to Prodkurov, In Podolia, 40 miles east of the border of Galicia.