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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's latest effort to conclude the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

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

After a tumultuous initial year in office, international actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's top aides, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Attempts and European Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more stable standing.

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

But, his first response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will persist to develop a list of possible solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from feedback from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly 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 called legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was presented to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”