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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent push to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a quick deal that local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a small group of Trump's key advisers, including top aide 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 plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new peace deal 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 under fire for endorsing a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

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

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or officials residing in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with obtaining a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance 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 conventional hardliner in the government who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more firm standing.

Rubio was part 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 acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this conflict based on feedback from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to explain that the agreement was just a initial offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

“Rubio made a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”