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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest 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 President Trump's recent push to conclude the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

His close ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

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

Following a chaotic initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's top advisers, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the war from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a notably more enthusiastic support of the proposal than that expressed by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help refine the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a set of potential ideas for resolving this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

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

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

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 negotiations. The proposal is based on feedback from the Moscow. But, it is also based on earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”