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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. His strong connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the war from restarting.

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

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help refine the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will require both sides to consent to challenging but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of potential solutions for ending this war based on feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to explain that the agreement was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary 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 presented to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “It 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 wrote. “The framework is offered as a strong structure for continuing discussions. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also informed by previous and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”