Ten minutes later, most of the patrons were settled on wooden benches in the building’s underground parking garage. There was no hurry or commotion. Laptops were reopened, coffees sipped through straws, chats resumed on smartphones. It was a seamless, routine exercise; a wartime habit that has become second nature.

After 16 months of conflict, the citizens of Ukraine’s capital — a lively, sophisticated city with bars and cafes on almost every corner — have long become accustomed to daily air raid warnings. Some hurry to subway stations or other shelters, but many do not, counting on the city’s air defense system to shoot down Russian missiles or drones, and waiting for a government app to tell them when the danger is past.

“Unfortunately, we have gotten used to it,” said Katrina Lopachuk, 35, a product manager at a shopping mall. “We call our friends and family to make sure they are okay, but we have faith in our air defenses. Deep inside we are all still worried, but you have to stay calm and get on with your life.”

Like tens of thousands of other people in Kyiv, Lopachuk was living in a high-rise when Russia invaded. Soon afterward, she moved to a small house in the suburbs. “I felt safer being close to the earth,” she said.

A trio of young friends hunched in a corner of the garage, laughing and listening to peppy music. Yulia Teran, 22, said she had been home during an air raid last year when a powerful wind blew open her windows. “I was really scared then, but I have psychologically adapted now,” she said. “It has become normal.”

Still, the hour-long wait in a muffled basement parking lot, with a disembodied voice periodically announcing that the air raid conditions were still in effect, created a hushed, trance-like mood. Friends chatted in whispers, as if in a museum. Students plugged into earphones, tuning out the threat altogether.

Some older residents spoke of distant, harrowing times early in the war, when normal urban life collapsed and people were fleeing or desperately trying to reach loved ones.

A beauty supply owner, Yulia Oblinski, 46, recalled an explosion that sent pedestrians and drivers racing to take cover. Soon afterward, she had a nightmare in which red fireworks were exploding. When she woke up, she said, her husband was shaking her and saying they needed to get the children to a shelter.

On another bench, a man reading a book made a few polite observations, then suddenly began recounting a long, complicated story about trying to get his ailing mother and small children to safety when Kyiv first came under attack. As he spoke, the exhaustion of the experience showed on his face, and tears briefly came to his eyes.

“We didn’t know where to go,” said the man, an office worker in his 50s who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name, Oleh. “We didn’t have enough money to leave the country, and there was no safe zone anywhere. I didn’t know how to protect my family.”

Three blocks away, the marble stairs of the Teatralna subway station lead down to a busy market with two bakeries, an electronics shop, and a florist with vases of freshly imported roses and lilies. Another staircase leads to the lower level where the trains run. Its doors open automatically when an air raid siren sounds so people can descend further toward safety.

Polina Kerneschko, 67, has owned the flower shop for 20 years, but she shut it down for much of last year. Now, things are quieter and business is flourishing, but she is always prepared to lock up and run at a moment’s notice.

“I heard the alarm yesterday morning, and I knew what to do,” she said Saturday with a confident smile. “Sometimes I get shaken when the sirens are long or the booms are close and people start running,” said Kerneschko. “But I just follow them down until it’s over.”

Alexander Khudolobetz, who teaches history at a nearby middle school, has often herded his students into the same subway station during air raid alarms. He said every class is given advance instructions so they know what to expect and how to behave.

“Still, I worry about the long-term psychological effects,” said Khudolobetz, 60, munching on a pastry while he waited for his train home. “Safety is a very subjective thing, especially for a child. The sirens are very intense. We humans adapt over time, but our basic instincts never recover.”

One sign does reassure him, he said. After 20 or 30 minutes huddled underground, “the kids start asking how soon we are going to eat.”

For some adults, a kind of fatalistic ennui has set in. One is Natalia Bruboleshkov, a homemaker who lives in Podil, a neighborhood just north of the city center where the sirens sounded loudly on Friday morning. Later, authorities said they had successfully intercepted six cruise missiles, six “Kinzhal” missiles and a reconnaissance drone at about 10:30 a.m.

“We heard some explosions, and they sounded close,” said Bruboleshkov, 34, as she sat on a bench inside Teatralna station Saturday. When the warning sounded, she recalled, she was watching TV in the kitchen; her son, 12, was playing games on his smartphone. Neither moved, she said with an apologetic shrug. “We’re just tired of it all.”