Austrians driven out of Bukovina

The British chronology of the war records under 24 June 1916 that the Austrian troops had been driven out of Bukovina. There is a good deal of exaggeration in this, though not much. After the fall of Czernowitz and the capture of Rădăuți, the Russian cavalry crossed the whole of Bukovina to the Carpathians within a few days. On 23 June the Russians entered Kuty on the Czeremosz, and on the night of 23/24 June Kimpolung. On the morning of 24 June the Austro-Hungarian units in southern Bukovina were ordered to fall back to the mountain positions at Jakobeny (PL) and Kirlibaba (PL). A Russian communiqué announced that the land had been cleared of the enemy. Its mountainous south-western strip, however, remained in Austrian hands.

Cossacks below the Carpathians

The pursuit group of General Mikhail Promtov, formed by the commander of the Russian Ninth Army, Platon Lechitsky, pressed south along the Romanian border. Its cavalry, the 1st Terek Cossack Division and the 10th Cavalry Division, pushed the right wing of General Korda’s Austro-Hungarian XI Corps back through Gura Humorului into the valley of the Moldova. According to Russian sources, Promtov’s infantry also took Suceava in these days. Lieutenant-Colonel Papp’s exhausted brigade, made up of Landsturm battalions, fell back day after day, and on 22 June, threatened with being outflanked by the Cossacks, it took up a blocking position east of Kimpolung. On the afternoon of 23 June the Terek Cossacks attacked it, in the evening broke its line in the centre and went round its left wing. During the night the remnants of the brigade reached Pojorâta (PL), west of the town.

Further west, in the valley of the Czeremosz, the 1st Don Cossack Division was pushing back General Brudermann’s cavalry corps. At noon on 23 June the Cossacks entered Kuty, a small Galician town on the border with Bukovina. A short counter-attack by the Austro-Hungarian 24th Infantry Division drove them out of the town for a moment, but they soon took it again. On the opposite bank of the river Wyżnica was burning. The Russian communiqué of 24 June reported the capture of Kuty and 150 prisoners taken by the Don Cossacks.

Retreat into the mountains

On the morning of 24 June Korda reported by telephone to Pflanzer-Baltin that Papp’s brigade was no longer fit to fight, and that the weak forces assembled at Pojorâta might be crushed by the advancing Russians. He advised a retreat to prepared positions on the ridges east of Jakobeny. Pflanzer-Baltin agreed, demanding that these positions be held at all costs. On the same day the 40th Honvéd Infantry Division left its blocking positions at Berhomet and set off via Seletin towards the fortifications at Kirlibaba. By the evening the Austro-Hungarian front in Bukovina ran along the ridges of the Eastern Carpathians, covering the roads to Vatra Dornei and on through the passes to Transylvania.

There were hardly any troops in Transylvania, only gendarmerie and a few improvised alarm battalions. The staff of the Seventh Army was already preparing to defend the Borgo Pass and other crossings in case Jakobeny and Kirlibaba fell. At noon on 24 June the Austro-Hungarian high command ordered Pflanzer-Baltin not to yield another step towards Transylvania and Hungary. “Every soldier of the army must know that here he is fighting for the decision of the campaign and the fate of the fatherland,” the order said. Divisions taken from the Italian front, where the Austrians were going over to the defensive after the offensive at Asiago, were already travelling east.

Romania watches

The rapid Russian advance mattered above all politically. Bukovina was being watched closely by Romania, which had long been bargaining with the Entente over the price of entering the war. Throughout June the Austrian command kept reminding Pflanzer-Baltin that Russian progress in Bukovina might prompt Bucharest to act. The Russian front commander, General Aleksei Brusilov, was not delighted either. On 24 June he asked Lechitsky why Promtov’s group had ventured so far south and exposed its rear. The main forces of the Ninth Army soon turned west, towards Kolomyia.

At the beginning of July the Austro-Hungarian XI Corps, strengthened by reinforcements, counter-attacked in the mountains and recovered part of the lost ground in the Moldova valley. Most of Bukovina, however, remained in Russian hands until the summer of 1917.