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The US Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His strong relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky initial visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to accept a quick deal that local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a tumultuous first year in power, international actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's top advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Efforts and European Responses

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were angered by his early speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a fantasy land,” he added. “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 conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the White House to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer 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 response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will necessitate each party to agree to challenging but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of possible solutions for resolving this conflict based on input from each party of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted 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 afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. It is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”