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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration newest initiative to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest push to conclude the conflict.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

This 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 respect. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a quick deal that local officials have called a surrender.

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

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the latest plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

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

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic support of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has gone from a uncertain position inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that went to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “And, securing a lasting peace will require both sides to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a set of potential ideas for ending this conflict drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

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

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this day and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is offered as a strong framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”