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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His close relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's recent push to settle the war.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his early attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to agree to a swift settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a chaotic first year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's key aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, 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 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 truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help refine the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will require each party to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of potential solutions for ending this conflict drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to explain that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“Rubio did make a call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is offered as a solid structure for ongoing discussions. It is based on feedback from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”