Speaking to British news podcast The News Agents, Vseviov said, "We need more urgency. We need to move faster," stressing that real peace can only come from pressure on Russia rather than the pressure on Ukraine, which seems to have recently been applied.

Vseviov argued that stronger sanctions made earlier would have meant we could have been in the same position regarding sanctions by now, yet with a much weaker Russia.

Estonia, which, as Vseviov put it, has been a neighbor of Russia for as long as the latter has existed, is in the process of increasing defense spending to 5 percent of GDP but also gets "assurances constantly" from NATO that any attack would trigger Article 5, i.e., collective defense.

With the U.S. questioning its NATO commitments, Vseviov cautioned that Europe must prepare to defend itself more adequately, declaring, "The era of total reliance on the Americans for our security is over."

The full News Agents article, in which Vseviov spoke to former senior BBC journalists Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel, is here.

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