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America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration newest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump latest effort to conclude the war.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his early attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, who he studied and maintains a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

It 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 pushing back against demands from the US to accept a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

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

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

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Efforts and European Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early speeches, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal 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 Response and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the administration to more stable standing.

Rubio was part of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable ceasefire will require both sides to consent to challenging but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a set of potential ideas for ending this conflict based on feedback from both sides of this war.”

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

“Rubio made 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 representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”