Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry criticized Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for "deliberately" creating tensions in the region.

In a statement, the ministry said that Pashinyan's assessment of Azerbaijani actions on the border with Armenia, voiced at a government meeting on Feb.15, "is a falsification of facts."

"It is well known that the stability that had been prevailing for almost five months was spoiled by the provocations of Armenia on Feb. 12, and the responsibility for this lies with the Armenian side," it said.

Pashinyan claimed that Azerbaijan was planning a "full-scale war" against Armenia.

On Monday, Azerbaijan’s State Border Service said that one of its soldiers was injured due to shots fired by Armenian forces toward the country's southwestern Zangilan district on Monday.

The ministry urged Armenia to explain why the Armenian Defense Ministry failed to keep its promise to conduct an investigation into the incident, as well as to clarify why it uses mercenaries at its border posts.

"If the Armenian side is really interested in the peace process, it should abandon its territorial claims to Azerbaijan," it added.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

Azerbaijan liberated most of the region during the war in the fall of 2020, which ended with a Russian-brokered peace agreement, opening the door to normalization. The Azerbaijani army initiated a counterterrorism operation in Karabakh last September to establish constitutional order after which illegal separatist forces in the region surrendered.