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The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration latest initiative to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

Driscoll's strong relationship 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 crisis.

Vance's Role in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that local officials have called a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's key aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the latest proposal, which was crafted 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 framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

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

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

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

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

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Doubts

That was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky position 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 leaders to help moderate the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a lasting peace will require each party to consent to challenging but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will persist to create a set of potential ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from feedback from each party of this war.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to explain that the deal was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the recipients 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 moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from input from the Moscow. But, it is also based on earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”