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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump recent effort to settle the conflict.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or statesman, and his early attempts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to agree to a quick deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in office, international actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

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

Initial Attempts and European Responses

Vance's initial attempts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were angered by his early speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

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

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Internal Concerns

That was a notably more enthusiastic 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 administration to more stable standing.

Rubio was part of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to create a list of possible ideas for resolving this conflict based on input from each party of this war.”

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 merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone 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 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 authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a strong structure for continuing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Moscow. But, it is additionally informed by previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”