TOP HEADLINES

· Russian forces have tried to advance in eastern Ukraine, using tanks, mortars and artillery to fire on the southern Kherson region, according to the Ukrainian military, while recently liberated Kherson city has lost power after heavy shelling.

· Nine people have been killed in fires over the past 24 hours as Ukrainians resort to using emergency generators, candles and gas cylinders in violation of safety rules to try to heat their homes amid power outages.

· Spanish security forces have found a third suspected letter bomb mailed to an EU satellite center at an air force base in Torrejon de Ardoz, just outside Madrid, its defense ministry said.

· Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the U.S. and its NATO allies were direct participants in the Ukraine war because of the support they were providing to Kyiv. READ MORE BELOW

· Russia's top diplomat added that big problems had accumulated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of failing to make the intergovernmental security body a real bridge with Russia after the Cold War.

· U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russian President Vladimir Putin was focusing his "ire and fire" on Ukraine's civilian population, bombing more than a third of Ukraine's water and electricity supply in a strategy he claimed would not work.

· Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has demanded Russia withdraw its heavy weapons and military personnel from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant if the UN atomic watchdog's efforts to set up a protection zone were to succeed.

· Kyiv also dismissed the deputy chief engineer of the Russian-occupied site, accusing him of collaborating with Moscow's forces and treason, after Moscow said it had promoted the engineer to serve as the director of the nuclear facility.

· Moscow has said the German parliament's move to recognize the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a Soviet-imposed genocide was an anti-Russian "provocation" and a bid to whitewash Germany's Nazi past.

· The U.S. Army will pay an American arms manufacturer $1.2 billion to give Kyiv six advanced surface-to-air missile systems, the Pentagon has announced.

· Switzerland has frozen nearly $8 billion in financial assets as of November 25 under sanctions against Russians to punish Moscow for its war in Ukraine.

IN DETAIL

Lavrov says U.S., NATO direct participants in war

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the U.S. and NATO of "directly participating" in the Ukraine war because of their support to Kyiv, while defending Moscow's strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. Lavrov told a news conference that Washington and the Atlantic alliance were directly involved because they were supplying Kyiv with arms and providing it with military training on their territory.

He went on to defend Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure: "We disable energy facilities (in Ukraine) that allow you (the West) to pump lethal weapons into Ukraine to kill Russians."

"So don't say that the U.S. and NATO are not participants in this war - you are directly participating. Including not only the supply of weapons, but also the training of personnel - you train the (Ukrainian) military on your territory."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Bucharest following a two-day NATO summit, said on Wednesday that Vladimir Putin was focusing "his ire and his fire" on Ukraine's civilian population, warning that Russia's recent strategy of targeting vital infrastructure would fail to divide Ukraine's supporters.

"Heat, water, electricity ... these are President Putin's new targets. He's hitting them hard. This brutalization of Ukraine's people is barbaric," he said.

Kyiv and the West say that Moscow's targeting of energy infrastructure is a war crime aimed at inflicting suffering on civilians by cutting off heating, light and power. However, Lavrov used his speech on Thursday to say that the West was fanning the flames in Ukraine and further afield.

Fanning flames in South China Sea

Having had "a real chance" to avoid conflict in Ukraine, the West had instead chosen to spurn Russian proposals to halt the expansion of NATO and agree a special security status for Kyiv. He added that NATO were now whipping up tensions near China in a way that posed risks for Russia.

"The South China Sea is now becoming one of those regions where NATO is not averse, as they once did in Ukraine, to escalating tensions," Lavrov said.

"We know how seriously China takes such provocations, not to mention Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, and we understand that NATO's playing with fire in these regions and that carries threats and risks for the Russian Federation. It is as close to our shores and to our seas as Chinese territory," he said.

Lavrov said that was why Russia was developing military cooperation with China and conducting joint exercises.

"The fact that NATO members, under the leadership of the U.S., are trying to create an explosive situation there, in the wake of Europe, is well understood by everyone," he said.