Lithuania’s foreign minister, Linas Linkevicius, said last week that he was “very afraid” for the Baltic States — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — which sit along NATO’s increasingly tense frontier with Russia. He expressed concern that Russia might try to test the United States before Mr. Trump takes office as president on Jan. 20. Members are supposed to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on their military, but only the United States, Britain, Greece, Poland and Estonia do so now. Mr. Skvernelis, the new prime minister, is viewed by some as the public face of a more powerful figure, Ramunas Karbauskis, the businessman who financed the Peasants and Greens Union. Mazvydas Jastramskis, a political scientist at Vilnius University, said that the new prime minister was “partly a mystery” even for seasoned political observers.

Source: New York Times November 22, 2016 19:25 UTC