Russia buried the last tsar's family 80 years after the shooting, the Church has not accepted the bones, and two of the children's remains have been in archive boxes since 2007

On the night of 16 to 17 July 1918 Bolshevik agents shot Nicholas II, his wife, their five children and four servants in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. The bodies were reburied at a second site. Nikolai Sokolov, appointed to investigate in February 1919, did not find them. Geli Ryabov and Alexander Avdonin later found a pit at Porosenkov Log outside Sverdlovsk, took two skulls, and reburied them in 1980. Ryabov revealed the site in Moskovskie Novosti in 1989. In 1991 an Interior Ministry excavation uncovered nine bodies, which a government commission identified as Nicholas, Alexandra, three daughters and four servants. On 17 July 1998 they were buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg. President Boris Yeltsin attended. Patriarch Alexy II did not, citing the politicisation of the investigation. In 2000 the Church canonised the family as passion bearers. In 2007 the remains of the son, Alexei, and a daughter believed to be Maria were found near the other burial site, and DNA analysis in 2008 and 2009 matched them to the family. In 2015 investigators reopened the case at the Church's request, and new genetic tests matched the earlier results. In 2017 the two children's bones lay in boxes in the state archives, waiting on the Church. In July 2018 the government said a new probe had confirmed the remains. As of October 2025 the Moscow Patriarchate had still not formally recognised them as genuine, and Alexei and Maria had not been buried^†.