Putin insists he is open to talks, as air-raid sirens sound across Ukraine

A pedestrian in the frontline city of Bakhmut, which continues to weather Russian attacks, in the Donbas region of Ukraine on Dec. 24, 2022. There is no electricity or running water in Bakhmut, which makes life for remaining residents increasingly difficult as temperatures drop. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted Sunday that he was willing to negotiate over his invasion of Ukraine, an oft-repeated line that U.S. and Ukrainian officials have dismissed as lip service, as air-raid sirens sent Ukrainians already on edge from months of war and bitter cold to seek shelter on Christmas Day.

The alert was lifted in most of Ukraine after about two hours, and there were no immediate reports of Russian strikes landing in the country. But it added to the anxiety of Ukraine’s first Christmas since Russia’s invasion, after days of warnings from officials that Putin’s forces would unleash a new wave of strikes targeting energy infrastructure.

As Ukrainians marked the holiday with resilience, gathering despite the sirens in churches and chapels for Christmas services, Putin repeated the claim that he was defending Russia’s national interests and that Ukraine and its allies were to blame for the conflict that has entered its 11th month.

“We are ready to negotiate with all the participants in this process about some acceptable outcomes, but this is their business — it’s not we who refuse negotiations but they,” Putin told an interviewer on state television in Russia.

Top Russian officials have frequently said that they are prepared to enter negotiations — Putin said last week that his goal was “to end this war” — while emphasizing almost in the same breath a determination to keep fighting. U.S. officials have said that Russia has offered no indications that it is prepared to negotiate in good faith.

There have been no serious peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in months, and Ukrainian officials have said that they will not negotiate until Moscow withdraws its troops. On Sunday, Ukrainian officials were quick to dismiss Putin’s remarks, with Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior presidential adviser, saying that the Russian leader “needs to come back to reality.”

“Russia doesn’t want negotiations but tries to avoid responsibility,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

Through the fall and start of winter, Russian forces have fired volleys of cruise missiles and launched drones at Ukrainian cities, aimed at energy and heating infrastructure. Military analysts have said it is part of a Russian strategy of plunging the country into darkness and cold to demoralize the population.

The bombardments have typically come at intervals of about a week. The actions Sunday that touched off the air alert could have been either Russia firing missiles or sending planes into the air that set off false alarms.

But the air-raid alarms are disruptive even when sounded as a precaution — for example, when Russian planes are in the air — and no actual strikes follow the sirens.

During the alerts, Ukrainians often move to corridors, bathrooms or other areas in their homes that are away from windows and deemed safer in case of a strike. Some people go to basements or quickly bundle their children into warm clothing to seek shelter in a subway station.

Ukraine celebrates Christmas as a national holiday Dec. 25 — in line with the Western calendar — as well as Jan. 7, for churches observing the Eastern Orthodox religious holiday.

Because of the war and electricity deficits from the Russian strikes on infrastructure, the Ukrainian capital is mostly devoid of holiday lights and decorations. But authorities set up a Christmas tree on a central square that is illuminated with generator-powered lights, so it has continued to shine even during the frequent blackouts.

Churchgoers crowded the small chapel of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, one of the capital’s oldest churches, for a Christmas service Sunday. Bundled up from the cold, they continued their prayers, unmoved, even as the morning’s air-raid alarm sounded.

On Saturday, hours after Russian shelling ripped through the center of the southern city of Kherson, killing at least 10 people, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said that the holidays “have a bitter aftertaste for us this year.”

“Dinner at the family table cannot be so tasty and warm. There may be empty chairs around it,” he said in a Christmas Eve message. “And our houses and streets can’t be so bright. And Christmas bells can ring not so loudly and inspiringly. Through air-raid sirens or even worse — gunshots and explosions.”

Those sentiments were evident in Kyiv, where friends and relatives of Ukrainian prisoners of war gathered on Christmas Eve and staged a performance called “Christmas in Captivity,” re-creating the image of the Last Supper that included barbed wire and empty steel bowls.

“We have this opportunity to gather at the abundant Ukrainian table, thanks to our soldiers who sacrifice their normal lives to protect us,” said Yevhen Sukharnikov, one of the organizers, whose 24-year-old son is a prisoner of war.

“They are being moved all the time, and we are not provided with any way to contact them,” Sukharnikov said.

The toll from months of war continued to climb. The Ukrainian military said Sunday that three demining experts had been killed in the Kherson region a day earlier while clearing mines and unexploded ordnance after the Russian military’s retreat from the area last month.

Towns closer to the front line also were hit by artillery overnight, Ukrainian officials said Sunday. Russian artillery fired into the town of Nikopol in southern Ukraine, the head of the regional military administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, said.

Nikopol sits on the western bank of the Dnieper River, overlooking the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on the opposite shore. Ukraine has accused the Russian military of firing artillery that is based on or near the plant’s grounds to strike Nikopol with impunity, as the Ukrainian military cannot return fire without risking hitting reactors or supporting safety equipment.

“The Russians do not stop mocking us in Nikopol,” Reznichenko said of the overnight strikes, according to Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Andrew E. Kramer and Anton Troianovski