[2] From September 2006 to August 2008 its main village, Chkhalta, hosted the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia and was the seat of the Azhara municipal community.

[4] Even though the area was no longer controlled by Georgia, the Georgian Government kept its municipal status as a sign of not recognizing any changes to the Abkhazian administrative divisions made by the breakaway republic.

On September 27, 2006, on the 13th anniversary of the fall of Sukhumi to the Abkhaz rebels and their allies from the Northern Caucasus (1993), the Kodori region and the adjacent pieces of land, governed by Georgia, were officially renamed Upper Abkhazia and declared a "temporary administrative center" of Abkhazia and the headquarters of the de jure Abkhazian government.

[6] In spite of Abkhaz and Russian protests, a new office of the de jure government was inaugurated, on the same day, by a high ranking delegation from Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, including President Mikheil Saakashvili and the Catholicos Patriarch Ilia II.

[8] On August 12, 2008, during the 2008 South Ossetia War, Russian and Abkhaz forces gained control of Upper Abkhazia in the Battle of the Kodori Valley.