It commonly represents the voiceless velar plosive /k/, like the pronunciation of ⟨k⟩ in "king" or "kick".

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was како (kako), meaning "as".

The Cyrillic letter Ka looks very similar, and corresponds to the Latin letter K. In many fonts, Cyrillic Ka is differentiated from its Latin and Greek counterparts by drawing one or both of its diagonal spurs with curved instead of straight.

Also in some fonts the lowercase form of Ka has the vertical bar elongated above x-height, resembling the Latin lowercase k. In Russian, the letter Ka represents the plain voiceless velar plosive /k/ or the palatalized one /kʲ/; for example, the word "короткий" ("short") contains both the kinds: [kɐˈrotkʲɪj].

The palatalized variant is pronounced when the following letter in the word is ь, е, ё, и, ю, or я.