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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent effort to settle the conflict.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his early attempts to promote the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

His close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

Following a chaotic initial year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a small group of Trump's key advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the White House to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a set of possible ideas for resolving this war drawing from input from each party of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“Rubio made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for ongoing discussions. The proposal is based on input from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”