A few weeks have passed since the incident during a football match between Dynamo and Gabala, when Georgian fans hung a poster with territorial claims against Azerbaijan from the stand of the stadium and then desecrated the Azerbaijani flag. And it was the second time in a year this had happened. It is obvious that it is about the malicious provocative actions of a well-organized group of individuals, who are well aware of the consequences of their misdeeds on Georgian-Azerbaijani relations, but still they work towards a deterioration of traditional friendly ties and bringing an unusual "tension" to them.
It was expected that the Georgian Interior Ministry would take strict measures against the instigators at least now, but it did not happen. This time there is no certainty that the situation was provoked by the activists of the Union of Georgian fans 'Komagi', who were invited to the Interior Ministry for an "explanatory conversation" a year ago. It is hard to imagine that the Georgian authorities will not try to act decisively now, after the Prime Minister of Georgia had to make a public apology to Azerbaijan. However, according to the data of Vestnik Kavkaza, nobody has been brought to administrative (not to mention criminal) responsibility and not even invited to another "conversation".
The reason is simple – the Ministry of Internal Affairs was not able to determine who exactly hung the banner with the provocative inscription against Azerbaijan on the stand and then spread even more provocative photos of the desecration of the flag on the Internet. Faces are not visible in the photo, and the stadium management claims it was photographed outside of the arena.
Meanwhile, blogs with outrageous content began to appear on the Georgian segment of Facebook in an attempt to justify the provocative actions, explaining them with tales about "many years of aggression" and so on. The authors are writing under pseudonyms, hinting at belonging to a particular subethnos of the Georgian nation using them. The administration blocked some of them, but they reappeared under different nicknames, threatening "to continue the fight against Azerbaijan", urging Georgian society to "wake up" and so on.
By all accounts, they are either crazy fanatics (or a fanatic), or a well-planned and deliberate provocation.
Anyway, it is impossible to believe that the Georgian authorities can, but do not want to stop such antics and identify the provocateurs, in other words they choose to publicly apologize after every incident.
It is impossible to believe this, because sane people are working in the government, and they are well aware of their own political interests and the interests of the country, connected with Azerbaijan by many strong threads. Especially now, when Georgia already has a lot of existential challenges.
In any case, the mood of Georgian society does not play in favor of "football hooliganism provocateurs" and contains a serious threat to them, because their actions are seen as a deliberate attempt to create problems for the country from scratch
That is why, "the response to the incident" in Gabala, where some of the Azerbaijani fans responded in a similar way, though it was widely covered by Georgian media, it led to a normal, predictable reaction. The fans and even people who are far from football write that the Georgian side itself has provoked, brought it to such incidents by failing to cope with its own provocateurs and bring them to justice.
UEFA has fined both clubs for what happened at the stadium, but the price is much lower than the one they would have to pay for the deterioration of bilateral relations.
That is why everyone is waiting for the Georgian special services to take more active steps to prevent provocations so that country would not find itself in a difficult situation again and would not have to deal with problems that have nothing to do with the football.
At the same time, it is impossible to abandon the impression that in purely football terms the Georgian teams lost all their matches to the Azerbaijani players because the provocateurs were able to bring completely strange motivations to the pure and noble phenomenon of football.
