With categoric correctitude, Russia’s Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov called in the foreign press. He wanted the world to know: 1) that the Red Army had gone beyond Soviet frontiers for the first time since the Germans attacked in June 1941; 2) that the Kremlin had taken pains to inform London and Washington of the step in advance.
Said Molotov, in part: “Beginnings have been made in the full re-establishment of the Soviet frontier as fixed in 1940 in accordance with the agreement between Soviet Russia and Rumania [and] treacherously violated by the Rumanian Government, in alliance with Hitlerite Germany. . . . The Supreme Command of the Red Army has given the order to advancing Soviet troops to pursue the enemy until his final rout and capitulation.*
“Simultaneously, the Soviet Government declares it does not pursue the aim of acquiring Rumanian territory or of altering the existing social structure of Rumania. . . .”
*The Prut was Czarist Russia’s boundary withRumania. In 1918 Rumania received Bessarabia as a reward for joining the Allies, pushed thefrontier back to the Dniester, where it remained until 1940.
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