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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump latest effort to conclude the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a capitulation.

Following a chaotic first year in power, international actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's key advisers, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

Additionally, 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 obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated support 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 uncertain position inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was part of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to meet 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 first response to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, securing a durable ceasefire will necessitate both sides to agree to challenging but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of possible ideas for ending this war drawing from feedback from each party of this conflict.”

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 called lawmakers to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

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

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a solid framework for continuing negotiations. It is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”