Editing Rodion Malinovsky (section)

===Stalingrad and Ukrainian Front===
The Red Army was hard-pressed by Germans in the [[Battle of Stalingrad]], and Stalin entrusted Malinovsky with the command of the hastily formed [[66th Army (Soviet Union)|66th Army]] to hold positions north-east of Stalingrad. At the same time Stalin ordered [[Nikita Khrushchev]], who served as his top political officer in Stalingrad, to "keep an eye" on Malinovsky.{{Citation needed|date=August 2021}}

The 66th Army had no combat experience, but this was the first time in the war Malinovsky had commanded a unit that was near full strength in both troops and equipment. In September and October 1942, he went on the offensive. His territorial gains were marginal, but he denied the Germans an opportunity to encircle Stalingrad from the north, and, slowed down, they decided to push into the city. Later that month, Stavka dispatched Malinovsky to the [[Voronezh Front]] as its deputy commander; in December 1942, he was sent back to [[Stalingrad]]. There the Red Army achieved its greatest success to that point in the war: on 22 November the Red Army fronts encircled the [[6th Army (Wehrmacht)|German Sixth Army]]. The German [[Army Group Don]], commanded by Field Marshal [[Erich von Manstein]], gathered its [[Panzer]] troops in the town of [[Kotelnikovo, Volgograd Oblast|Kotelnikovo]] {{convert|150|km}} west of Stalingrad and launched a desperate counterattack to save the Sixth Army.

Malinovsky led the powerful [[Soviet Second Guards Army]] against [[Hermann Hoth|Hoth]]. In vicious fighting he forced the Germans to retreat, breached deeply echeloned and well-prepared German defenses, and destroyed the Kotelnikovo army grouping. It was the first World War II large-scale clash of armor to be lost by Germany. Malinovsky's victory sealed the fate of 250,000 German and other [[Axis Powers]] soldiers trapped in the Stalingrad pocket. Stalin promoted Malinovsky to colonel general, and awarded him with the highest Soviet decoration for outstanding generalship — the [[Order of Suvorov]] of the 1st degree.

In February 1943, Malinovsky resumed his command of Southern Front, and in less than two weeks he expelled Manstein from Rostov-on-Don, opening the road to Ukraine to the Red Army. In March 1943, Stalin elevated him to rank of [[Army General (Soviet rank)|Army General]] and gave him command of Southwestern Front, tasked to drive German troops away from the industrially rich [[Donbas]]. Through a sudden attack in mid-October, Malinovsky managed to surprise a large German force in the region's key city of [[Zaporizhia]] and captured it. The campaign split German forces in the South and isolated German forces in [[Crimea]] from the rest of the German [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Eastern Front]].

On 20 October, the Southwestern Front was renamed  [[3rd Ukrainian Front]]. From December 1943 to April 1944, Malinovsky smashed the German [[Army Group South]], and [[Battle of West Ukraine (1944)|liberated much of the southern]] [[Ukraine]], including [[Kherson]], [[Mykolaiv|Nikolaev]] and his home city of Odessa. By that time, according to Khrushchev's opinion, Stalin grew much more confident of Malinovsky's loyalty.