Tsar’s death ruled unlawful by Russian court

A ten-year legal battle to prove that the last Tsar of Russia and his family were assassinated by the Soviet state and not by a bunch of renegade Bolsheviks, a move spearheaded by the Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna (pictured), has finally ended, with the Russian Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that the killing of the Romanovs was a premeditated political act.

Pavel Odintsov, of the Russian Supreme Court, said that the murders – Tsar Nicholas 11 and his family were first shot in their bodies, then bayoneted and finally shot in their head in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 17, 1918 – were unlawful and that the family were innocent of any crimes and should be legally rehabilitated.

Commentators believe that the ruling is unlikely to presage any attempt by the Romanov family to reclaim their palaces or regain a foothold in the constitutional order of Russia. But the Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, 54, may think otherwise. She has claimed the headship of the Imperial Family of Russia and the title Titular Empress and Autocracy of All the Russians since 1992. She is believed to favour the restoration of the Romanov family to the throne of Russia.

Perhaps sensing this, Ivan Melnikov, deputy leader of the Communist Party, said: "It was not the Bolsheviks who eliminated the Tsar, but all of the working people." He added that it was the obduracy and brutality of the Tsar's regime that triggered the revolution in the first place.