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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the White House's newest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. His close connection with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the conflict.

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

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, who he studied and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky first trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's key aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the recent proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the peace framework the administration is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “It could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with securing a agreement on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Internal 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 conventional hawk in the government who has gone from a uncertain position inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his first response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will require each party to consent to challenging but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will persist to develop a set of possible ideas for resolving 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 Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this day and I believe 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 ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is based on feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”