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Yerevan urges Baku to refrain from escalation and withdraw troops from Armenia

The Armenian Foreign Ministry emphasized that the Azerbaijani side intruded into the sovereign territory of Armenia

YEREVAN, May 15. /TASS/. Yerevan hopes that Baku will refrain from further escalation and withdraw its troops from Armenia’s territory, Armenian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Anna Naghdalyan told reporters on Saturday.

"We emphasize once again that the Azerbaijani side intruded into the sovereign territory of Armenia. We appreciate statements by our international partners urging Azerbaijan to withdraw its armed units from the territory of Armenia immediately," she said. "The Armenian Foreign Ministry hopes that the Azerbaijani side will heed these calls and will not exacerbate the situation further."

"Armenia is determined to take all measures to ensure its territorial integrity, and it informed its partners about that on various platforms," the spokesperson noted.

On Wednesday, the Armenian Defense Ministry said that Azerbaijan’s armed forces had tried to carry out "certain work" early in the morning in one of the border districts of the Syunik Province. Later in the evening that day, Armenia’s Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the Azerbaijani armed forces had crossed Armenia’s state border, advancing 3.5 kilometers deep into its territory.

After the end of hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone last autumn, when seven districts adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh came under Baku’s control, the Armenian-Azerbaijani border started to run along an area in close proximity to the Syunik and Gegharkunik regions. Territorial disputes between the two sides have surfaced from time to time.

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