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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the White House's newest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his early attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous first trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to agree to a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's top advisers, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by smart people operating in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate each party to consent to challenging but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to create a set of possible ideas for resolving this war based on feedback from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently 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 White House.

“Rubio did make a call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. The proposal is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”