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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. His close connection with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's recent push to settle the conflict.

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

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

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

After a tumultuous initial year in office, international actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top advisers, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

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

“Peace won’t be made by failed negotiators or politicians residing in a dream world,” he continued. “It could be made by smart people operating in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the deal was tepid:

“Ending a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will require each party to agree to challenging but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a set of possible solutions for ending this conflict based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the White House.

“Rubio made 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 delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a solid structure for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”