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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the war.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that local officials have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and European Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled 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 endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

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

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help refine the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “And, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate each party to consent to challenging but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a list of possible solutions for ending this war based on input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to explain that the deal was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

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

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. It is based on input from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by earlier and current input from Ukraine.”