RUSSIAN missiles slammed into Ukraine’s two biggest cities today, killing at least five people and injuring almost 100, as Moscow stepped up attacks on urban areas following a bloody bombardment of the Russian border city of Belgorod last Saturday.

Four civilians were killed and 92 injured in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on his Telegram channel, as Kinzhal missiles, which can fly at 10 times the speed of sound, bore down on the city.

Another person was killed in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, officials said.

Ukrainian commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi claimed that his country’s air defences had shot down all 10 of the hypersonic missiles, out of about 100 of various types that were launched.

More than two dozen died in Saturday’s shelling of Belgorod, which Russia blamed on Ukraine. The attack  was one of the deadliest on Russian soil since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started more than 22 months ago.

Russian officials said today that the death toll had reached 26, including five children, following a new salvo of rockets.

Cities in western Russia have regularly come under drone attacks since May, although Ukrainian officials never acknowledge responsibility for strikes on Russian territory or the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula.

"They want to intimidate us and create uncertainty within our country. We will intensify strikes. Not a single crime against our civilian population will go unpunished,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday, describing the bombardment of Belgorod as a “terrorist act.”

He accused Western nations of using Ukraine to try to “put Russia in its place.”

In Ukraine, Russian actions have killed least 41 civilians since the weekend.

Writing on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Mr Zelensky claimed that at least 70 missiles had been shot down today, almost all of them in the Kiev area, adding that Western-supplied air defence systems such as Patriots and NASAMS had saved hundreds of lives.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that it had conducted missile and drone strikes on military-industrial facilities in and around Kiev. Depots storing missiles and munitions supplied by the West also were targeted, the ministry said.

“The goal of the strike has been achieved, all the targets have been hit,” it added without elaborating.