Although never completely confirmed by all parties involved, the official version is that the man holding the Victory Banner was Meliton Kantaria, a Georgian Red Army soldier. After the war he worked as a shop manager and later a delegate for the Abkhazian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. After the fall of the Soviet Union, war broke out between Georgia and Abkhazian separatists. Kantaria and his family moved to Russia and he died in 1993.