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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump latest push to settle the conflict.

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

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

Following a chaotic initial year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a small group of Trump's key aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter 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 peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's early attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new peace deal closely resembled 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 endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials residing in a dream world,” he continued. “It might be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain position inside the administration to more stable standing.

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

But, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will necessitate each party to consent to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of possible solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary made a 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 delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he subsequently stated. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. It is based on input from the Moscow. But, it is also based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”