At the beginning of March an attempt was made the breach the ring of encirclement by units of 33rd Army from within and a shock group of 43rd Army from without. The German command brought up additional forces. The gap between the two attacking Soviet groups narrowed to just 2 km but they were unable to overcome the remaining distance. Conditions inside the pocket worsened on a daily basis. On March 11 a total of 12,780 personnel remained trapped and a report by Western Front's chief of the NKVD Special Department (dated April 8) stated in part:Further orders from the Front demanded that 43rd, 49th and 50th Armies relieve the pocket by March 27, but the general exhaustion of the Red Army after months of counterattacking, plus the onset of the spring rasputitsa, doomed these efforts to failure. Meanwhile, Army Group Center was determined to clear its rear areas. Seven divisions were concentrated against the pocket which was soon reduced to an area of roughly 10 km by 25 km. In early April the 33rd was finally authorized to withdraw through forests under partisan control in the direction of Kirov, a distance of up to 180 km. In the attempt the Army's commander, Lt. Gen. M. G. Yefremov was wounded and took his own life to avoid capture. Only a few thousand men managed to filter out to friendly lines. In the 160th Major Rusetskii was wounded in the shoulder by an explosive bullet on April 14 and was taken prisoner on April 27; several days previously he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He would die on November 15, 1943 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. On April 24 Col. Ernest Zhanovich Sedulin took over the division which had again been reduced to a remnant but avoided being disbanded.