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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the conflict.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, who he studied and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a chaotic first year in power, international actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's key aides, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor 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 son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “It could be made by intelligent people operating in the actual situation.”

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

Rubio's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain position inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal 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 war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, securing a lasting ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but essential compromises. That is why we are and will persist to develop a list of potential solutions for ending this war based on feedback from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to explain that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary made a call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

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