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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with JD Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest effort to settle the conflict.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or diplomat, and his early attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky first visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a capitulation.

Following a chaotic initial year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's top advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Doubts

That was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

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

But, his first response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a durable peace will necessitate each party to agree to challenging but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a set of possible solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this day and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was presented to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for ongoing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also informed by previous and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”