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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to settle the war.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous first visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have called a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous initial year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's early attempts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or officials living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the White House to more stable footing.

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

However, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will require both sides to consent to challenging but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of potential solutions for ending this war drawing from input from both sides of this war.”

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

“Rubio made a call to us this day and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers 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 acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later stated. “It is offered as a solid structure for continuing discussions. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”