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The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump latest push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

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

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

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

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's top advisers, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is working on either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some key situation on the ground,” the VP stated.

Initial Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his first reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but essential compromises. That is why we are and will continue to create a set of possible ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from feedback from each party of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker 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 just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“Rubio made a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing discussions. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”