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KYIV, Ukraine — In strikes on Kyiv early in the war and last week, destruction arrived as a bolt from the blue, with missiles streaking in at tremendous speeds. Monday’s drone attack was different.

Noisy and slow-flying, the drones buzzed over the city, eerily announcing their arrival with a hum that sounded like a moped. The first explosions rang out shortly before 7 a.m., as residents were preparing for work and children were just waking up.

One drone flew low over office buildings and apartment blocks in the center of Kyiv, visible from the streets below. Soldiers at checkpoints or other positions in the city opened fire with their rifles.

Instead of heading to classrooms, children, some already dressed in their school uniforms, made their way to basements to take shelter just as they had a week ago, when Kyiv came under sustained attack.

Yulia Oleksandrivna, 86, huddled in a basement with her young grandson. She said anger was too soft a word to describe how she was feeling. A retired professor, she had lived through World War II, fleeing her birthplace in Russia with her family when she was 5 and a half years old.

“The sound of the sirens that we have these days, I know this sound from my childhood,” she said. “At the start and at the end of my life, this is the music of my life.”

At least two more blasts hit at about 8:15 a.m. Thick white smoke blanketed parts of central Kyiv along with an acrid burning smell. The city stayed under an air raid alert for nearly three hours.

“I was smoking on my balcony, and one flew by,” said Vladislav Khokhlov, a cosmetologist who lives in a 13th-floor apartment. He said he saw what looked like a small metallic triangle buzz past not much higher than the rooftops, sounding like a chain saw.

One explosion hit a residential building. Shortly after emergency workers recovered a body from the rubble, the mayor of Kyiv stood before the damaged four-story block.

“This is the true face of this war,” said the mayor, Vitaly Klitschko.

Steps away, the body of a woman lay in a half-unzipped black body bag. An investigator held her thin wrist, covered in dirt and debris, and then folded her arms across her body.

In one area of central Kyiv, plumes of smoke from fires rose from both sides of a street. “What a horror,” said Anna Chugai, a retiree.

“Again! This is now happening all the time,” she said.

One apparent target of the strikes, a municipal heating station, appeared undamaged. Soldiers had opened fire with their rifles when the drones drew near, said Viktor Turbayev, a building manager for a department store a block away.

“They want us to freeze,” he said of the Russians’ continued attacks against electricity, heating and other key services. “They want us to go back to wood stoves.”

Below ground, a hushed community of families formed in the safety of subway stations, in scenes recalling the early days of Russia’s invasion in February. Mothers sat with children, playing cards. Some women lay infants to sleep on mats. For a time passing trains would wake the children and they would cry, until they fell so deeply asleep that the sound no longer bothered them.

“We started coming here with my daughter last Monday,” when Kyiv was shelled for the first time in three months, said Anastasia Havryliuk, 34. Ms. Havryliuk said she takes her daughter to work most days now, so they can dash together to a bomb shelter if the air raid sirens blare.

“I can’t imagine her being without me in the bomb shelter,” she said. “In such a situation I always need to be with my daughter.”

High school students studied. Many people sat on the floor with laptops. Women breastfed babies and changed diapers. Cats and dogs sat on their owners’ laps. All put their lives on hold and waited for the alarm to end.