Investigators will test remains believed to belong to Crown Prince Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria, who were killed with their family by Bolsheviks

Russia’s investigative committee has reopened its case on the 1918 murder of the Romanov royal family after the Russian Orthodox church demanded further testing of what are believed to be their remains.

The church’s hesitancy to allow the remains of two final members of the family to be buried has divided the Romanovs’ descendants, with one branch of relatives supporting the call for more tests and another expressing impatience with the hold-up.



In a statement on Wednesday, spokesman Vladimir Markin said that, at the suggestion of a working group created this summer by the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, the investigative committee had reopened the case to conduct additional identity testing on the remains using previously unavailable evidence.



Investigators will test remains thought to belong to Crown Prince Alexei Romanov and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria, against bloodstains on the uniform of their great-grandfather, Emperor Alexander II, who was killed in a bombing by radicals in St Petersburg in 1881.



They will also compare the remains to those of their aunt, Grand Duchess Yelizaveta Fyodorovna, and study newly discovered materials from a 1918-1924 investigation into the murder by the White Guards who fought the Bolsheviks.

As part of the case, the bodies of Russia’s last emperor, Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra Fyodorovna, would need to be exhumed from their tomb in St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Cathedral, Markin said.

Opened in 1993 after the first remains were found in Yekaterinburg, the murder case was closed in 1998 because those who committed the crime were dead. Earlier this month, the working group suggested burying Alexei and Maria with the rest of their family on 18 October, but reportedly backed off from these plans after the powerful Russian Orthodox church questioned the authenticity of the remains.



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Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in 1917 and was held by the Bolsheviks after his cousin George V – Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather – refused him asylum in Britain over political concerns.



He, his family and four attendants were executed by firing squad in the early hours of 17 July 1918 at a house in Yekaterinburg, and their bodies were thrown into a mineshaft. But the Bolsheviks later removed the remains, burned them, corroded them with acid and reburied them in an unknown location. For the next eight decades, rumours persisted that Princess Anastasia or other family members had survived.

The Romanovs’ suspected remains were finally unearthed in 1991, and in 2008 US and Russian experts confirmed through genetic testing that they belonged to the tsar, his wife and three of his daughters.

But the Russian Orthodox church never recognised the remains as those of the royal family, and when they were buried in St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1998 at a ceremony attended by the then president, Boris Yeltsin, the priest avoided speaking their names as he read the funeral rites.

In 2007, more remains were discovered in a separate burial site near the first, and genetic testing reportedly confirmed that they belonged to Alexei and Maria, who were 13 and 19 when they were killed. They have been kept in a state repository awaiting burial.

A geneticist from the Russian Academy of Sciences told the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper that testing on the remains had left “no doubt that all the members of the tsar’s family have been discovered”.

But speaking to the Guardian earlier this month, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox church, Vsevolod Chaplin, said it wanted further testing of both the remains buried in Peter and Paul Cathedral and those in the state depository, arguing that previous investigations of their authenticity were opaque. For the church, a case of mistaken identity is not permissible.

“People have questions. We want further investigation so that any tests are done in the presence of church officials,” Chaplin said. “These people have been canonised, and if their remains are found they will be considered holy relics that believers will pray to. For this reason it’s very important to make sure.”

The church’s request is backed by one set of Romanov descendants, headed by Nicholas II’s great-great-granddaughter, Princess Maria Vladimirovna, who lives in Spain. But it is criticised by another branch, led by Prince Dmitry Romanovich, which does not consider Maria Vladimirovna to be the rightful heir to the tsarist family and which has welcomed the move to bury Alexei and Maria.



A representative of this branch told reporters earlier this month that some family members had been planning to come to the burial in Russia and said there was still “bitterness over the fact that the church hasn’t recognised the remains”.

Although the Romanovs’ descendants live abroad, they occasionally travel to Russia, where they are still revered by some Orthodox faithful and far-right groups. A regional lawmaker this summer sent a letter to both branches inviting them to resettle in Russia or in annexed Crimea.