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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

His strong relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a swift settlement that local officials have called a surrender.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a small group of Trump's key advisers, 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 vocal supporter of the latest plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It might be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Concerns

That was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky position inside the White House to more stable standing.

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

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “And, achieving a durable ceasefire will require each party to agree to challenging but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of possible ideas for ending this conflict drawing from input from each party of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this day and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for ongoing discussions. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Russian side. However, it is additionally informed by previous and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”