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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent push to settle the war.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to agree to a quick deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a small group of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the proposal or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help refine the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will require both sides to agree to challenging but essential compromises. That is why we are and will continue to create a set of possible ideas for resolving this conflict based on feedback from each party of this war.”

In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to explain that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this day and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side. But, it is additionally informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”