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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump latest push to conclude the war.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his early attempts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

His close ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to agree to a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's key aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course 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 Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the White House is developing either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Attempts and European Responses

Vance's early attempts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his early speeches, 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.

But, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the war from restarting.

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

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Private Doubts

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help refine the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a durable ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for resolving this war based on input from each party of this war.”

In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to explain that the agreement was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“Rubio did make a 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 presented to one of our officials,” said 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. “It is presented as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”