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The US Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest initiative to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

His close ties with Vance, who he studied and shares a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's top advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by smart people operating in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Doubts

That was a notably more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “And, achieving a durable peace will necessitate each party to consent to challenging but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a list of potential ideas for ending this war drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to explain that the agreement was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think 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 peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a solid framework for ongoing discussions. It is based on feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”