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America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's recent effort to conclude the war.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, who he studied and shares a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a swift settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's top advisers, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the recent plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this past 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 restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the administration to more stable standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a durable ceasefire will require each party to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for resolving this conflict based on input from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

“Rubio made 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 officials,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently stated. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. The proposal is based on input from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”