A group of Georgian ethnic Azerbaijanis and several Georgians demonstrated on 8 February near the Georgian Parliament building in protest of the inauguration of the monument to the Armenian soldier, Mikhail Avagian, in the village of Bugasheni. This village is located in the heavily Armenian populated Georgian region of Akhalkalaki.

The Armenian soldier Mikhail Avagian is said to have participated in the fighting in the Azerbaijani regions Horadiz, Hadrut and Fizuli. According to the Azerbaijani media, Avagian was one of the accomplices of the Khojali massacre, in which on 26 February 1992 hundreds of Azerbaijani civilians were brutally murdered by Armenian troops with the help of the Russian 366th motorized rifle regiment. An independent review of this information about Avigyans participation in the massacre is not available though.

The protesters in Tbilisi said the inauguration of the monument in Akhalkalaki was a targeted action directed against the Azerbaijani-Georgian relations.

The Georgian political expert, Simon Kopadze, pointed out in his speech at the demonstration that the rally was organized not only against the placement of the monument but in principle against separatism. "The construction of a monument to a separatist in Georgia is a provocation, and the monument must be dismantled," he said.

There were no Georgian officials at the rally, with the exception of the member of parliament, Azer Suleymanov (ethnic Azerbaijani), who said that the rally go on as long as it takes until the Georgian authorities dismantled the monument.

The monument was inaugurated on January 20 in the Georgian Akhalkalaki region. The opening ceremony was attended by the Armenian Ambassador to Georgia, Ruben Sadoyan, the mayor of Akhalkalaki and the city council's chairman, as well as Georgian MPs Enzel Mkojan and Samvel Manukjan (both ethnic Armenians). In connection with this incident, the Georgian Ambassador in Baku, Zurab Pataradze, was called to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. The Azerbaijani ambassador to Georgia, Dursun Hasanov, gave a note of protest to the Georgian Foreign Ministry.

In the meantime, an Armenian association in Georgia has requested that a monument to the Azerbaijani soldier of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, Jalil Safarov, be dismantled in the Azerbaijan-populated Georgian region of Marneuli.