Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite has won the first consecutive presidential term in the country’s history, with her anti-Russian platform striking a chord with voters.
Grybauskaite, a 58-year-old former European Budget Commissioner and former minister of finance, won 57.9 percent of the votes in the nation of 3 million on Sunday, the electoral commission said. Zigmantas Balcytis, a social democrat supported by prime minister Algirdas Butkevicius, scored 40.1 percent.
Escalating tensions with Russia are likely to define Grybauskaite’s second five-year term, just as financial austerity was the hallmark of her first term, which started in 2009, the year Lithuania’s economy shrank by 15 percent.