YEREVAN, May 14. /TASS/. The Defense Ministers of Armenia and Russia, Vagharshak Harutiunyan and Sergei Shoigu, have discussed the situation on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border in a phone call on Friday, the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
"Harutiunyan briefed his Russian counterpart on the steps Armenia was taking, pointing out that the Armenian army retained control of the entire border, including the Sev Lich segment that Azerbaijani troops had crossed. The defense minister emphasized the need to resolve the situation peacefully and slammed violations of Armenia’s sovereign territory as unacceptable," the statement reads.
Harutiunyan and Shoigu also discussed bilateral defense cooperation, the Russian peacekeeping mission in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and a number of regional security issues.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that the Azerbaijani Armed Forces had attempted to carry out "certain activities" in the Syunik Province’s border district. The ministry added that the Azerbaijani troops halted their activities following some steps taken by Armenian forces. According to Armenian Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces had crossed Armenia’s border, moving 3.5 kilometers into the country’s territory. On Thursday night, Pashinyan announced that he had handed down instructions to hold consultations with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on the situation in the Syunik Province.
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 and several districts were handed over to Baku. As a result, the Armenian-Azerbaijani border was moved close to the Syunik Province.