For this, an expert council is being formed, which will include researchers, historians, archivists and priests of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Today in the afternoon in the Moscow Sretensky monastery for more than 9 hours there was a conference "The case of the murder of the Tsar's family: new examinations and materials", led by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. The main discussion focused on the authenticity of the remains found near Yekaterinburg. Colonel of Justice Marina Molodtsova said that 34 forensic examinations have been assigned to this case.
Bishop Tikhon of Yegoryevsk, who was present at the conference, said that the murder of Nicholas II and his family may have a ritual character.
“We take the ritual murder version very seriously. Moreover, a significant part of the church commission has no doubts that it was so,”said Father Tikhon, who is the secretary of the church commission. He also stressed that this version must be proven and substantiated.
“The fact that the emperor, even a renounced one, is being killed in this way, that the victims were distributed among the murderers, as evidenced by [Yakov] Yurovsky (one of the participants in the execution), and that many wanted to be regicides … this already suggests that that for many it was a special ritual,”added Bishop Tikhon.
Marina Molodtsova announced the plans of the investigators to appoint a psychological and historical examination to find out if the shooting of the royal family was a ritual murder.
According to her, for this, an expert council is now being formed, which will include researchers from the Academy of Sciences, Moscow and St. Petersburg universities, historians, archivists and priests of the Russian Orthodox Church. The research will be carried out after receiving the conclusion of the historical and archival expertise, on which specialists are currently working.
Patriarch Kirill said at the closing of the conference that research into the murder of the family of the last Russian emperor Nicholas II is not tied to any dates or terms, so there can be no haste.
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“For us, this is not just a question about how this murder was committed, what all this meant, whether the remains found are the remains of the royal family. This is also a question related to the spiritual life of our people, because the royal family is canonized and is very deeply revered by the people. Therefore, we have no room for error,”he added.
Nicholas II and his family were shot in the summer of 1918. After the opening of the burial in 1991 and long examinations, the remains of members of the imperial family were buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in the tomb of the Romanovs in St. Petersburg in 1998. But the Russian Orthodox Church still adheres to the official opinion about the lack of research and does not recognize the remains of the king. Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II even refused to participate in the ceremonial burial.
The remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria had not yet been discovered. Presumably, they were found in 2007 in the Pig's Log. In September 2015, they were also buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna and five children, and in February 2016 - the doctor of the royal family, Evgeny Botkin. After the canonization, the discussion about the authenticity of the remains intensified. Indeed, if confirmed, the remains should be venerated as holy relics. Now the investigation of the remains of the royal family continues in the framework of the criminal case, which was initiated for this purpose in 2015.
Anastasia ELIKOVA