The 'Middle Don Offensive Operation' was a Soviet undertaking, otherwise known as 'Malyi Saturn', within the 'Stalingrad Strategic Offensive Operation', in the Stalingrad and Caucasus regions of the southern USSR to pin the German forces which might otherwise have been available for transfer north to the assistance of Generaloberst Friedrich Paulus’s 6^th Army contained in Stalingrad by 'Uran' (16/29 December 1942).