YEREVAN, May 13. /TASS/. The recent incident along the Sev Lich segment of Armenia’s border in the Syunik Province was a provocation staged by Azerbaijan, Armenian Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday.

"What happened in Sev Lich was a pre-planned provocation because the Azerbaijanis clearly brought fake maps with them to prove that they allegedly were on Azeri soil," he pointed out. "Armenia’s sovereign territory should be inviolable and Azerbaijani troops should return to their initial positions," Pashinyan insisted.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said earlier that the Azerbaijani Armed Forces had attempted to carry out "certain activities" in the Syunik Province’s border district in the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday. The ministry added that the Azerbaijani troops halted their activities following some steps taken by Armenian forces. According to Pashinyan, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces had crossed Armenia’s border, moving 3.5 kilometers into the country.

Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, 2020, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the document, Azerbaijan and Armenia maintained the positions that they had held, while Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the line of contact along the Lachin Corridor and several districts were handed over to Baku. As a result, the Armenian-Azerbaijani border was moved close to the Syunik Province.