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Updated: June 22, 2025
In the north Field Marshal von Hindenburg's efforts to divert the Russian activities in the south by a general offensive along the Dvina line had not developed beyond increased artillery bombardments which apparently exerted no influence on the movements of the Russian armies in Volhynia, Galicia and the Bukowina.
Simultaneously with the drive in Volhynia, the extreme left wing of the Russian southern army under General Lechitsky forced the Austro-Hungarians to withdraw their whole line in the northeastern Bukowina, invaded the crownland with strong forces and advanced to within fourteen miles of the capital, Czernowitz.
But there the Russians made a stand. The hardest possible fighting took place on September 4, 1915, all along the line in Galicia, Volhynia, and on the Bessarabian border. Much of it was of the "hand-to-hand" kind, for both sides had thrown up fortifications and dug trenches, which they took turns in storming and defending.
It had been masked by the extreme left wing of the Russian armies and, unless some unexpected turn came to the assistance of the Austrians, its fall was sure to be only a matter of days, or possibly even of hours. All of southern Volhynia had been overrun by the Russians who were then, on the ninth day of their offensive, forty-two miles west of the point from where it had begun in that province.
Odessa was thus reduced to the trade of the region to the west of the last-named river, having lost that of the provinces of Poltava, Kharkof, Kursk, Orel, Ekaterinoslaf, etc., and only retaining Kherson, Bessarabia, Volhynia, Kief, etc., which would still be sufficient for her commercial well-being. But Odessa is threatened with a new and far more formidable rival in Sebastopol.
Five German aeroplanes carried out a raid on the small town of Jogishin, north of Pinsk, dropping about fifty bombs. The battle in Volhynia and Galicia continued with undiminished force on June 8, 1916. Near Sussk, to the east of Lutsk, a squadron of Cossacks attacked the enemy behind his fortified lines, capturing two guns, eight ammunition wagons, and 200 boxes of ammunition.
To the north, along the Ikwa from Dubno to the border, reenforcements were also brought up by the Russians and succeeded in holding up any further advance on the part of the Austrian troops. Especially hard fighting took place in the neighborhood of Novo Alexinez, a little village just across the border in Volhynia.
"But no, all is lost by another side, by the fault of entrusting an Austrian to guard the magazines, and cover the retreat of all these brave armies, and not placing a military leader at Wilna or Minsk, with a force sufficient either to supply the insufficiency of the Austrian army to meet the combined armies of Moldavia and Volhynia, or to prevent its betraying us."
General von Bothmer's German army, which formed the center of the forces in Volhynia and Galicia, advanced from Zaloshe on the Sereth toward Zbaraz, a few miles northeast of Tarnopol. Before the latter town, which the Russians seemed to be determined to hold at any cost, new reenforcements had appeared and opposed the advance of the Austro-German forces with the utmost fierceness.
Nor was this all. Austria and Prussia sent their contingents, amounting in all to 50,000 men, to guard Napoleon's flanks on the side of Volhynia and Courland. And this mighty mass, driven on by Napoleon's will, gained a momentum which was to carry its main army to Moscow.
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