26 June 2007 then Deputy Defence Minister Mirab Kishmaria was appointed Sosnaliev's successor. During the August 2008 war in South Ossetia, he oversaw the Abkhazian conquest of so-called Upper Abkhazia, the only part of Abkhazia that had remained under Georgian control since the 1992-1993 war. Kishmaria remains Minister of Defence until the present day.