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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration newest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump recent push to settle the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled chaotic.

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

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to accept a swift settlement that local officials have called a surrender.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's top aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

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

Early Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful 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 said held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

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

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

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people operating in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a agreement on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Concerns

That was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the White House to more stable standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, securing a durable peace will necessitate each party to consent to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of possible ideas for resolving this war based on feedback from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The GOP lawmaker 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 just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary made 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 presented to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on feedback from the Moscow. But, it is additionally based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”