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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the White House's newest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent effort to settle the war.

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

His close relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous first visit to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a quick deal that local officials have called a surrender.

After a chaotic first year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people operating in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a notably more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help refine the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, securing a lasting peace will require each party to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of possible ideas for ending this war drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to explain that the deal was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“Rubio made a call to us this day and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”