A meeting between the foreign ministers of Ukraine and France took place inside a bomb shelter underneath the historic opera house in Odesa, Ukraine, on Thursday, January 26, as Russian missiles targeted the area, the two foreign ministries said.

Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba was hosting his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, in the southern port city when air-raid sirens forced them to hold talks in the shelter, officials said.

“Probably the first time in history when foreign ministers hold talks in the basement of an Opera House,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter, alongside a photo of the two ministers seated at a table in a windowless room.

Colonna also tweeted a photo taken in the room, and wrote: “Thanks to a Russian missile, I experienced my first diplomatic bilateral meeting in a shelter.”

Senior military officials in Odesa said Russian strikes damaged supplies of electricity, water, and heat, but caused no casualties. Additionally, the Southern Command of Ukraine’s armed forces said a missile launched from a Russian Su-35 fighter jet was shot down at around 2 pm on Thursday. Credit: MFA of Ukraine via Storyful