A large ballistic missile attack has pounded Kiev, authorities said, wounding at least five people after Moscow vowed retaliation for strikes in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine.
Loud explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital, causing a residential building near the government district to shake, while dozens took shelter in an underground metro station in the city centre.
"The capital has come under a mass ballistic missile attack," Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kiev City Military Administration, wrote on Telegram.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said five people had been wounded and one of them hospitalised, noting that fires and damage to residential buildings occurred across the Shevchenkivsky, Dniprovsky and Podilsky districts.
Ukrainian authorities and the US embassy had earlier warned of a possible significant attack on the capital after Russia said it would "punish" those responsible for deadly strikes in a part of eastern Ukraine under its control.
On Saturday, both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the US embassy in Kiev issued warnings about the risk of a major Russian airstrike.
"We are seeing signs of preparation for a combined strike on Ukrainian territory, including Kiev, involving various types of weaponry" including the Oreshnik, a Russian nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, Zelenskyy said.
Kiev had anticipated the attack after its own forces launched a drone barrage in the Russian-controlled east, which Moscow said hit a college dormitory and killed at least 18 people.
Launched overnight on Thursday to Friday, the drone salvo—one of Ukraine's deadliest such strikes in months—also wounded 42 in Starobilsk, in the occupied Luhansk region.
Most of those killed and missing were young women born between 2003 and 2008.
Ukraine denied targeting civilians, saying it had hit a Russian drone unit stationed in the Starobilsk area, which lies about 65 kilometres from the front line.
