What can a 250-year-old democracy learn from a 35-year-old upstart?
That’s one of several issues that reporter Stephanie Zimmermann and photographer Ashlee Rezin, of the Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Public Media, reported on during a trip to Lithuania in April 2026.
Here’s what this reporting project explores:
- Democracy: Americans haven’t had to physically fight for their democracy in a long time. In 1990, Lithuania was the first Soviet state to declare independence. Now it’s the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe, with three tech unicorns. But even amid economic growth, voter turnout is dropping. How are Lithuanians protecting their democracy against voter apathy and foreign misinformation?
- Defense: A piece of land in Lithuania roughly 65 miles long could hold the key to the future of Europe. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine grinds on, what do Lithuanians want Americans to know about the Suwalki Gap, the Achilles’ heel of NATO?
- Economics: If you buy furniture containing birch or pine at IKEA, there’s a good chance the wood came from Lithuania. Reporting follows lumber from the forest to a factory southwest of Kaunas, Lithuania, to the shelves of a store in Chicago’s suburbs to explain the links between raw materials, retail goods, and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic—and see how tariffs are upending that balance.
Image caption: Thousands gather for an April 25, 2026, free speech protest in Cathedral Square in Vilnius, Lithuania, after a right-wing populist party in the government’s ruling coalition tried to control the country’s Ministry of Culture and threatened the independence of public broadcaster Lithuanian National Televison and Radio. Image by Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times.
