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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the White House's newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest effort to settle the conflict.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist 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 rocky initial trip to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the administration is working on either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “It might be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Internal Doubts

That was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the White House to more firm standing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this 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 response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will require each party to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a set of possible solutions for ending this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the deal was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later stated. “The framework is offered as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”