The Director of the Chancellery of the Imperial House stated in an interview with NSN (the National’naia Sluzhba Novosti, or National News Service) that the current steps being taken in the investigation of the so-called Ekaterinburg remains demonstrate a responsible approach to the question of the authenticity of these remains.
Russia will conduct a full psychological and historical investigation into the motives behind the murder of the Imperial Family. The investigation will be conducted by specialists in various fields, including criminologists. Each of these investigators will be subject to criminal sanctions for any willful distortion of the results of their work. Bishop Tikhon of Egorievsk, chairman of the Patriarchal Council, has confirmed this point. As reported by Interfax on Wednesday, December 13, His Grace has stated, and many experts have confirmed, that the murders display certain symbolic features and might therefore be characteristic of a “ritual murder.”
The Director of the Chancellery of the Imperial House, Alexander Zakatov, on a broadcast by NSN, stated that the current steps being taken constitute a responsible approach to establishing the authenticity of the remains.
“In the investigation of the murders of the Imperial Family, all versions of events must be thoroughly investigated. If we omit looking at one set of facts, then those who seek to politicize this investigation will be able to say later that the investigators were ‘hiding something.’ Most people are sincere and honest, and only want to establish the truth. But there is a group of persons who definitely are politicizing this process. They are trying to disparage the Church and accuse it of obscurantism. But in fact the Church is very responsibly approaching this question [of the identification of the remains—NSN]. The Imperial House fully supports the Church in this matter,” Zakatov said.
According to Zakatov, the murder of the Imperial Family might very well bear the hallmarks of a ritual murder.
“We all know perfectly well that for the Bolsheviks, faith in God in any form it takes was something to be reviled. For them, therefore, all actions taken against people of faith bore a symbolic character. They attempted to eradicate all things connected to religion with merciless cruelty. In particular, they displayed a hatred toward the Orthodox faith and all things connected to it, including its Orthodox monarch. In the person of the Imperial Family, not only was a political leader eliminated, but a symbol of the Orthodox realm. This was not merely an execution, but a statement of militant atheism. But one cannot see this as an act of revenge by members of one religion against those of another,” Zakatov concluded.
In the summer of 1991, not far from Ekaterinburg, the remains of nine people were found. A subsequent investigation suggested that these remains belonged to the Imperial Family. After a range of tests and investigations, the remains were buried in St. Petersburg. In 2007, the remains of two more bodies were discovered, not far from the site of the first burial of the royal family. Investigations determined that they belonged to the children of Emperor Nicholas II—Maria and Aleksei. In 2015, an additional investigation again confirmed the identity of the remains.