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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump recent push to conclude the conflict.

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

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, who he studied and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a surrender.

Following a chaotic first year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some key situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Efforts and EU Reactions

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

But, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with securing a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic support of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was part of a US team that went to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will necessitate each party to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to create a set of possible ideas for resolving this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to explain that the deal was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “The framework is presented as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. It is derived from input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”