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The US Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration newest initiative to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest effort to settle the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial visit to the 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 quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some key reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

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

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more stable standing.

Rubio was part of a US team that went to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a durable ceasefire will require both sides to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of possible solutions for ending this conflict drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this day and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a strong structure for continuing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. But, it is also based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”