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The US Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His close connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or statesman, and his initial attempts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky first visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to accept a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's key aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“All criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Attempts and European 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 camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new peace deal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the war from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people living 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 tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain position inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was part of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable ceasefire will require each party to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of possible solutions for resolving this war based on feedback from each party of this war.”

In private, he was said to be 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 contacted legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is offered as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is also based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”