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The US Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the conflict.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early attempts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a quick deal that local officials have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in office, foreign policy decisions 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, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's early attempts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

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 week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

That was a distinctly more full-throated support of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the administration to more stable footing.

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 ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to challenging but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a set of possible solutions for resolving this war drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly 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 contacted lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“Rubio did make a call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was presented to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a strong structure for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally informed by earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”