Lithuania

Lithuania is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of the Baltic States and is located on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania borders Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast) to the southwest. Lithuania covers an area of ​​65,300 km2 (25,200 square miles) and has a population of 2.8 million. The largest city in its capital is Vilnius. Other major cities are Kaunas and Klaipeda. Lithuanians belong to the Baltic ethnic language group and speak Lithuanian, one of the few living Baltic languages.

For thousands of years, various Balts lived on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. In the 1230s, the land of Lithuania was unified by Mindaugas, and on July 6, 1253, the Kingdom of Lithuania was established. In the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe. Today Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were all lands of the Grand Duchy. With the Union of Lublin in 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed the Polish-Lithuanian Federation, a voluntary two-state personal union. The Federation lasted for more than two centuries, with neighboring countries dismantled between 1772 and 1795, and the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory. At the end of World War I, the Lithuanian Independence Act was signed on February 16, 1918, establishing the modern Republic of Lithuania. In World War II, Lithuania was first occupied by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union re-occupied Lithuania when the Germans were withdrawing towards the end of the war in 1944. Lithuanian armed resistance to the Soviet occupation continued until the early 1950s. On March 11, 1990, a year before the official dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania passed the Lithuanian National Reconstruction Act, making it the first Soviet Republic to declare independence.

Lithuania is a developed country and a high-income developed economy. Very high ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks favorably in terms of civil freedom, press freedom, and internet freedom. Lithuania's population has been declining since the 1990s, and social issues such as income inequality and high suicide rates remain a problem. Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Eurozone, the Nordic Investment Bank, the Schengen Agreement, NATO and the OECD. Participating in the Nordic Baltic VIII (NB8) Regional Cooperation Format.