Russia attacked western Kyiv with two cruise missiles, as the UN secretary general António Guterres visited the Ukrainian capital, a move that was hard to see as anything other than Moscow mocking the institution.

Two loud explosions rocked Kyiv on Thursday evening, after Guterres visited the site of massacres and mass graves on the city’s outskirts, and met with Volodymyr Zelensky.

One of the rockets that struck Kyiv on Thursday landed near the hotel where the visiting UN secretary general is staying, according to his spokesman.

The rocket hit barely an hour after Antonio Guterres held a news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Guterres and his team are safe, his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told CBS News, the BBC's partner in the US.

He added that the UN delegation was meeting the prime minister in his office and were not in the hotel at the time.

"I am in Kyiv today. Two rockets have exploded in Kyiv, I was shocked to be informed that two rockets had exploded in the city where I am," Guterres told BBC News during his visit.

"So this is a dramatic war, and we absolutely need to end this war, and we absolutely need to have a solution for this war."