Short answers, pulled from the story.
Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of northern Europe, on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. It borders Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, and Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west.
The independent Republic of Latvia was first proclaimed on the 18th of November 1918 after breaking away from the Russian Empire. After Soviet and Nazi occupations, Latvia restored full independence on the 21st of August 1991 following the failed Soviet coup.
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. It joined the Hanseatic League in 1282 and grew into the largest port in the Russian Empire.
The Singing Revolution was a peaceful movement that began in 1987 among the Baltic Soviet republics and ended with the restoration of Latvian independence on the 21st of August 1991. The first large demonstrations gathered in Riga at the Freedom Monument.
The sole official language of Latvia is Latvian, a Baltic language of the Indo-European family. Russian remains the most widely used minority language, spoken as a mother tongue by 37.7 percent of the population in 2023, while the nearly extinct Livonian language is protected by law.
Latvia was occupied three times during World War II: forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941, and re-occupied by the Soviets in 1944. The Soviet re-occupation formed the Latvian SSR for the next 45 years.
Yes. Latvia joined both NATO and the European Union in 2004, achieving its major foreign policy goals of the 1990s. It adopted the euro as its currency on the 1st of January 2014.