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The US Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent push to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were labeled chaotic.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a chaotic initial year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a small group of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter 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 working on either misinterprets the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's initial attempts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and stop the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with securing a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Private Doubts

That was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a shaky stature 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 officials to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require each party to consent to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a set of possible ideas for ending this conflict based on feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently stated. “It is offered as a solid structure for ongoing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. But, it is also informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”