Exhumation of the Last Russian Tsar and His Wife for Authenticity Testing

The French news agency reports from St. Petersburg, Russia, about the exhumation of the remains of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, and his wife, Alexandra, for "genetic testing" to determine their authenticity. Russian investigators and researchers exhumed the remains of Nicholas II and Queen Alexandra from the Romanov royal family on Wednesday, October 1st, as part of a new investigation. The Romanov family ruled Russia for about 300 years until Nicholas II abdicated in 1917 following the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1918, the last Tsar of Russia, along with his wife, five children, and several servants, were executed by the Bolsheviks, and their bodies were abandoned in a mine. Shortly thereafter, the Bolsheviks burned the bodies and buried them. This new investigation, which began with the exhumation of the remains of the Russian royal family, is being conducted to mark the upcoming centenary of this period in Russian history, so that after identifying all members of the royal family, they can all be buried in one location. According to the head of the research team, samples were taken on Wednesday from the remains of Nicholas II, his wife, and also from the uniform of Alexander II, the grandfather of the last Tsar of Russia, who was himself assassinated. Russian researchers began investigating the murder of the Russian royal family for the first time after discovering a mass grave near Yekaterinburg in the Ural region in 1991. The Tsar, his wife, and five children were exiled to the Ural region after the Russian Revolution and were executed in that same area. In the Yekaterinburg mass grave, the remains of the Tsar, his wife, and three of their children were found, and the Russian government officially identified them in 1998. In 2007, two more bodies were found in another grave in a different location in the Ural region, believed to be those of the Tsar's heir, Alexei, and another daughter, Maria, who were 13 and 19 years old at the time of their deaths, respectively.