key points
- Mr Putin's remarks come as attacks on Ukraine continue.
- He said he believed the Kremlin was "acting in the right direction".
- A day before, a deadly Russian attack on the southern city of Kherson killed and wounded scores of people.
Russia is ready to negotiate with all parties involved in the war in Ukraine but Kyiv and its Western backers have refused to engage in talks, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview aired on Sunday.
Russia's 24 February invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most deadly European conflict since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Mr Putin said that Russia is "prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes with all the participants of this process".
He said, "it's not us who refuse talks, it's them" — something the Kremlin has repeatedly stated in recent months as its 10-month-old invasion of Ukraine drags on.
Mr Putin also repeated that Moscow has "no other choice" and said he believed the Kremlin was "acting in the right direction".
"We're defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people," he said.
An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Mr Putin needed to return to reality and acknowledge it was Russia that did not want talks.
"Russia single-handedly attacked Ukraine and is killing citizens," Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted. "Russia doesn't want negotiations, but tries to avoid responsibility."
Mr Putin's remarks come as attacks on Ukraine continue.
A country-wide air raid alert was announced twice on Sunday alone, and three missiles in the afternoon hit the city of Kramatorsk in the partially occupied Donetsk region, local officials reported.
The missiles hit an industrial area of the city, and there weren't any casualties, according to the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk, Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Elsewhere in the frontline region, around the city of Bakhmut, where fierce battles have been underway in recent weeks, the Russian forces were struggling to keep up the pace of their offensive, a US-based think tank reported this weekend.
"Russian forces' rate of advance in the Bakhmut area has likely slowed in recent days, although it is too early to assess whether the Russian offensive to capture Bakhmut has culminated," the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its recent update.
The think tank cited Russian military bloggers, who it said has recently acknowledged "that Ukrainian forces in the Bakhmut area have managed to slightly slow down the pace of the Russian advance around Bakhmut and its surrounding settlements."
Sources on Ukrainian social media "previously claimed that Ukrainian forces completely pushed Russian forces out of the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut" around 21 December, the report added.
"Russian forces will likely struggle to maintain the pace of their offensive operations in the Bakhmut area and may seek to initiate a tactical or operational pause," the institute concluded.
A day before, a deadly Russian attack on the southern city of Kherson, retaken by Ukrainian forces last month, killed and wounded scores of people.
The Russian forces shelled Ukrainian-held areas of the partially occupied Kherson region 71 times over the past 24 hours, including 41 attacks on the city of Kherson, the region's Ukrainian governor Yaroslav Yanushevich reported on Sunday.
A total of 16 people have been killed, according to the official, including three emergency workers killed in the process of demining the Berislav district of the region. Yanushevich said that 64 more have been wounded.
In the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region, the city of Nikopol was shelled overnight from heavy artillery, Governor Valentyn Reznichenko said. No casualties have been reported.
