Ship with remains of Tsar's wife sails to St Petersburg for reburial

Moscow, Sep 24 (UNI) The ship with remains of Ms Maria Fyodorovna, Tsar Alexander III's Danish-born wife, resting in Copenhagen for about 80 years, is heading to Russia's northern city of St Petersburg for reburial.

Ms Fyodorovna, known in her native country as Princess Dagmar, would be reburied in St Petersburg according to her last wishes.

Russia and Denmark had reached an agreement last year to rebury the empress's remains in Russia's former imperial capital.

The body will be reburied at the Peter and Paul Fortress, next to her husband and other members of the Romanov dynasty, who ruled Russia for more than 300 years.

The casket with her remains left the Roskilde Cathedral and was paraded through Copenhagen before being put on the ship sailing to St Petersburg, RIA Novsoti news agency reported.

Fyodorovnas, including members from the Romanov family, and a Russian government delegation led by Culture and Mass Communication Minister Alexander Sokolov and Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov, attended the ceremony in the cathedral.

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Ms Fyodorovna did not leave Russia for her native Denmark until 1919.

Ms Fyodorovna's son-- Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II -- and her daughter-in-law and grandchildren were killed by the Bolsheviks in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in 1918, but until her death, she refused to acknowledge that the massacre had ever taken place.

The remains of Nicholas II were reburied in St Petersburg in July 1998.

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