Never mind the tsar: Russia exhumes Nicholas II remains for new probe

Russian investigators on Wednesday exhumed the remains of the country’s last emperor Nicholas II and empress Alexandra as part of a new probe into the notorious 1918 slaying of the Romanov family. A leading investigator involved in the probe, Vladimir Solovyov, told the Echo of Moscow radio station that they had taken “samples from Nicholas II, from the empress, and from the uniform of emperor Alexander II,” the last tsar’s grandfather, who was himself assassinated in 1881.

We have decided to start again from the very beginning and carry out renewed examinations.

Vladimir Solovyov

The tsar, his wife, their five children and their servants were shot by the Bolsheviks and thrown into a mineshaft in 1918 before being burnt and hastily buried. While Russian criminal investigators ruled in 2008 that the remains of Alexei and Maria were authentic after DNA testing, their identity has not been accepted either by the Russian Orthodox Church, which has canonised the last Romanovs, nor by some Romanov descendants. In July, the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church pressed for the case to reopened. The question of the authenticity of the remains has taken on fresh urgency ahead of the looming centenary of the murder, as Russia wants to bury all seven family members together.

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