KYIV, Ukraine – Noisy and slow, drones buzz through the city, eerily announcing their arrival with a hum that resembles a motorbike. The first explosions rang out just before 7 a.m., when Kyiv’s residents were getting ready for work and children were just waking up.
By the time the attack ended, at least four people had been killed in one capital at once despite defiance and fear.
During the attacks earlier in the war and last week, destruction had come to Kyiv like a flash of blue, with rockets coming at tremendous speed. Monday’s drone strike was different, with residents aware of the drones overhead, searching for their targets.
Attacks highlight Russia’s growing use Iran-made drones, explodes on impact and is easier to shoot down, as Western analysts say Moscow’s arsenal of precision missiles is running out. While Iran has officially denied supplying Russia with drones for use in Ukraine, US officials say the first batch of weapons is August delivery.
Drones fly low over office buildings and apartment complexes in the center of Kyiv, visible from the streets below and add a splash of terror. Soldiers at checkpoints or other positions in the city opened fire with their rifles.
Among the dead was a young couple, including a woman six months pregnant, who were pulled from the rubble of a residential building, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
After nightfall, air raid sirens sounded again in Kyiv and beyond, as Ukrainian officials said air defense systems were targeting Russian drones again.
“Stay in the shelter! Take care of yourself and your loved ones,” said Oleksiy Kuleba, governor of Kyiv province, wrote on messenger app Telegram.
Monday’s airstrikes were just the latest to hit the capital, more than a week after Kyiv was hit by Russian missiles repeatedly.
Yulia Oleksandrivna, 86, was huddled in the basement with her young grandchild on Monday morning. She said that angry was too mild a word to describe how she felt. A retired professor, she lived through the Second World War, fleeing her birthplace in Russia with her family at the age of five and a half.
“The sound of the sirens that we have these days, I know this sound from my childhood,” she said. “At the beginning and at the end of my life, this was the music of my life.”
At least two more explosions occurred around 8:15 a.m. Thick white smoke enveloped central Kyiv areas along with a pungent smell. The city was on air raid alert for nearly three hours.
“I was smoking on the balcony and someone flew by,” said Vladislav Khokhlov, a beautician who lives in an apartment on the 13th floor. He said he saw what looked like a small metal triangle buzzing not much higher than the rooftops, sounding like a chainsaw.
An explosion hit a residential building. As soon as emergency workers retrieved a body from the rubble, the mayor of Kyiv stood in front of the damaged four-story building.
“This is the real face of this war,” Klitschko said.
A few steps away, a woman’s body lay in a half-open black bag. An investigator grabbed her thin wrist, covered in dirt and debris, and crossed her arms in front of her body.
In an area in central Kyiv, flames rose from both sides of a street. Anna Chugai, a retired person, said: “It was horrible.
“Again! She said.
One obvious target of the attacks, a city heating station, appeared to be undamaged. Viktor Turbayev, the building manager of a department store a block away, said soldiers opened fire with rifles as the drones approached.
“They want us to freeze,” he said of the Russians’ continued attacks on electricity, heating and other vital services.
Below ground, a secluded family community is established in the safety of subway stations, in scenes that recall the early days of the Russian invasion in February. Mothers play cards with their children. Some women put their babies to sleep on mats. For a while, passing trains would wake the children up and they would cry, until they were so sound asleep that the sound no longer bothered them.
Anastasia Havryliuk, 34, said she took her daughter to work most days recently, so they could run to the bomb shelter together if the sirens of the air raid sounded.
“I couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t have me in the bomb shelter,” she said.
