Zelensky Urges Ukrainians to Persevere as Putin Says Moscow Ready for Long War

The sirens in Ukraine, which indicate warplanes or missiles have been launched in Russia or Belarus, lasted a couple of hours. It couldn’t immediately be established whether Russia had struck Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials had warned that Russia would try to make the Christmas and New Year period as miserable as possible for Ukrainian civilians, part of a focus on targeting the population far behind the front lines. Moscow has targeted Ukraine’s power grid and civilian infrastructure going into the winter, leaving millions without power or heat in a bid to sap Ukrainians’ morale.

Mr. Zelensky’s address mixed the somber with the rousing, recognizing the price his country was paying for resisting Russia’s 10-month invasion while pledging it would continue.

“We’ll celebrate our holidays as always,” Mr. Zelensky said. “We’ll laugh and enjoy ourselves as always. With only one difference: We won’t wait for a miracle, since we’re creating it ourselves.”

Thousands of Ukrainian families are celebrating the holidays after losing friends or relatives to the war. According to Western estimates, about 100,000 Ukrainian service personnel have died or been injured in the conflict. Thousands of civilians have also perished. 

Western officials have said that Russian forces have also lost about 100,000 soldiers to death or injury. 

“Freedom has a high price,” Mr. Zelensky said, “but slavery’s price is even higher.”

Orthodox Ukrainians traditionally celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, but many have begun switching to Dec. 25 as part of a broader move to align with the West and reject Russia, which celebrates in January.

Officials in the Kherson Region in southern Ukraine said three emergency workers were killed Saturday while carrying out demining work in areas recently recaptured from Russians. The death toll from Russian shelling of central Kherson on Saturday rose to 13, officials said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday its forces were continuing offensive operations in the directions of the cities of Kupyansk and Lyman in eastern Ukraine, both of which Kyiv’s forces retook during an offensive over the fall. Russian troops were fighting across the eastern Donetsk region, the Defense Ministry said, which Mr. Putin has claimed as part of Russia’s territory and whose defense is a priority for the Kremlin.

In Russia, state television released an interview with Mr. Putin, who said he is open to talks on ending the war—now entering its 11th month—as he has said repeatedly in recent weeks. 

“We are ready to negotiate with all the participants in this process about some acceptable outcomes,” he said. “But this is their business. It’s not we who refuse negotiations, but they.”

At the same time, however, he doubled down on the invasion and said he believes Russians are prepared to support a protracted war. 

Just about everyone, or “99.9% of Russians,” he said, is “ready to put everything toward the interests of the motherland.”

Mr. Putin also threatened that Russian forces will destroy all Patriot missile defense systems provided by Washington to Kyiv. The White House has promised one of the highly advanced batteries, which would significantly boost Ukraine’s air-defense capabilities as Moscow continues to pursue its monthslong campaign targeting civilian infrastructure over the winter. 

Ukrainian officials maintain that Russian forces haven’t managed to destroy even one of the Himars rocket launchers provided by Western governments, which helped turn the tide of the conflict in the summer and into the fall. Those weapons systems allowed Ukrainian forces to destroy Russian supply lines and retake more than half the territory Moscow’s troops captured since the Feb. 24 invasion.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, said Sunday that international price caps on Russia’s energy resources are unacceptable. Over the course of December, Western leaders have agreed to place price caps on Russian oil and on natural gas. 

“We will never agree to such a distortion and destruction of the market pricing process,” he said.

The comments come ahead of an expected response early this week by Mr. Putin to the cap on Russian oil, which aims to dent Kremlin funding for Mr. Putin’s invasion while still keeping the Russian supply of oil available on global markets. 

On Friday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister

Alexander Novak

said Russia could reduce its production by 500,000 to 700,000 barrels a day—which he described as a 5% to 7% reduction in capacity—by early next year. 

Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Evan Gershkovich at evan.gershkovich@wsj.com