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The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with JD Vance has positioned a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's recent push to conclude the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his early attempts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

His close ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a swift settlement that local officials have called a surrender.

After a chaotic initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a durable peace will require each party to consent to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a set of potential solutions for resolving this war based on feedback from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“Rubio made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. It is based on input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on previous and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”