Swagger error: Relative paths to the individual endpoints

I have created a nodejs 'Hello World' project and I was trying to reorganize the swagger.yaml taking the paths out of the main yaml file into a sepparate paths.yam file:

This is my api/swagger/swagger.yaml:

swagger: "2.0"
info:
  version: "0.0.1"
  title: Hello World App
# during dev, should point to your local machine
host: localhost:10010
# basePath prefixes all resource paths
basePath: /
#
schemes:
  # tip: remove http to make production-grade
  - http
  - https
# format of bodies a client can send (Content-Type)
consumes:
  - application/json
# format of the responses to the client (Accepts)
produces:
  - application/json
paths:
  $ref: './paths.yaml'
  /swagger:
    x-swagger-pipe: swagger_raw
# complex objects have schema definitions
definitions:
  HelloWorldResponse:
    required:
      - message
    properties:
      message:
        type: string
  ErrorResponse:
    required:
      - message
    properties:
      message:
        type: string

and this is the api/swagger/paths.yaml that I'm referencing to:

/hello:
  # binds a127 app logic to a route
  x-swagger-router-controller: hello_world
  get:
    description: Returns 'Hello' to the caller
    # used as the method name of the controller
    operationId: hello
    parameters:
      - name: name
        in: query
        description: The name of the person to whom to say hello
        required: false
        type: string
    responses:
      "200":
        description: Success
        schema:
          # a pointer to a definition
          $ref: "#/definitions/HelloWorldResponse"
      # responses may fall through to errors
      default:
        description: Error
        schema:
          $ref: "#/definitions/ErrorResponse"

I get the following Swagger error:

Relative paths to the individual endpoints. They must be relative to the 'basePath'.

Reference could not be resolved: ./paths.yaml

Both files 'swagger.yaml' and 'paths.yaml' are placed in the same directory 'api/swagger/'. I've tried to reference paths.yaml in different ways:

paths:
  $ref: 'paths.yaml'

or

paths:
  $ref: './api/swagger/paths.yaml'

But I get the same error. Is it possible to reference the paths in a sepparate yaml file?

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