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The US Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the White House's newest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's recent effort to settle the war.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early attempts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

His strong relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, international actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's key aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

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

Early Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate 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 tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a durable peace will require each party to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a set of possible ideas for resolving this conflict based on input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the agreement was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later stated. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from input from the Russian side. However, it is also informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”