Dalia Declares Victory

Lithuania's incumbent President Dalia Grybauskaite (above with blonde hair) has declared victory following a second round of voting in the Baltic country's presidential elections.

With nearly all votes counted she had won 58% with her Social Democrat rival Zigmantas Balcytis trailing on 42%.

The election was fought amid rising concerns in the region after Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Ms Grybauskaite thanked her supporters for granting her a second term.

"No president has been elected twice in a row in Lithuania. It will be a historic victory for all of you," she said.

President Grybauskaite's reputation for plain speaking has led to her being dubbed the "Iron Lady", the nickname of former British PM Margaret Thatcher whom she describes as one of her political models.

The 58-year-old former EU budget chief - who ran as an independent - focused her campaign on national security.

Ahead of the second-round vote, she said Russia had chosen "confrontation, aggression and a review of post-war peace structures".

Lithuania is the largest and most southerly of the three Baltic republics.

Not much more than a decade after it regained its independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, Lithuania was welcomed as a Nato member in late March 2004.

The move came just weeks before a second historic shift for the country in establishing its place in the Western family of nations as it joined the EU in May 2004. These developments would have been extremely hard to imagine in not-so-distant Soviet times.

Russia, anxious about the implications of the eastward advance of the EU and Nato to include the three Baltic republics, has a particular eye on Lithuania which has an important border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Trakai Castle -  Historical Lithuanian Landmark

Lithuania's boom years came to a sudden end in 2008, and after two decades of capitalism, the country became one of the biggest victims of the global economic crisis. This prompted the implementation of austerity measures, including spending cuts and tax rises.

The Social Democrat-led government that came to power in December 2012 has pledged to ease some of these measures and says that Lithuania should be on course to join the euro by 2015.