A former bank analyst has been sworn in as Lithuania’s new president.

Gitanas Nauseda, 55, who won the May presidential election, arrived on Friday at Lithuania’s Parliament with his family in a pomp-filled ceremony.

Mr Nauseda, who will travel to neighbouring Poland for his first foreign trip, said “we must not forget that freedom and independence is not a gift, those must be won and protected”.

Lithuania Inauguration
Lithuanian President-elect Gitanas Nauseda with his wife at the ceremony (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP)

During the presidential campaign, Mr Nauseda said he will not go to Moscow unless Russia withdraws from Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

The move sparked fears that other former Soviet republics, including Lithuania, could be Moscow’s next acquisitions.

He took over as head of the Baltic nation from Dalia Grybauskaite, who served for 10 years and called Russia “a terrorist state”.