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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. His strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent effort to settle the conflict.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a chaotic initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff 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 developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's early attempts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration 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 spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “It might be made by smart people operating in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a uncertain position inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will require each party to consent to difficult but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of possible ideas for ending this war based on feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed 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 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. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a solid framework for ongoing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”