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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the war.

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

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift settlement that local officials have called a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's top 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 relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the White House is working on either misunderstands the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people operating in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

That was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain position inside the White House to more stable footing.

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

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will necessitate both sides to agree to challenging but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a set of potential ideas for ending this war based on input 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 called lawmakers to explain that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was delivered 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. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently stated. “It is offered as a strong structure for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Moscow. But, it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”