Russian investigators said on Wednesday new DNA tests conducted at the request of the Orthodox Church had confirmed that the exhumed remains of Nicholas II, the country's murdered last czar, and his wife, were genuine.
The statement brings closer the possibility that the entire Romanov family — who were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 — could be laid to rest together with the purported remains of Alexei and Maria, two of the czar's five children, also interred in St. Petersburg with the others for the first time.
The church, which canonized the slain family in 2000, has been pushing for extra proof that the remains of Nicholas, whose Romanov dynasty ruled Russia for 300 years, are bona fide, a precondition for Alexei and Maria to be buried.