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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's recent push to conclude the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to accept a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's key aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“All criticism of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close 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 administration, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials residing 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 peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was part of a US team that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, securing a durable peace will require each party to agree to challenging but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a set of potential ideas for resolving this war based on feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently 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 initiative 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 recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently stated. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for ongoing discussions. It is derived from input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”