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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the White House's newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His close relationship with JD Vance has positioned a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest push to conclude the war.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

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 courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to accept a swift settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

Following a chaotic initial year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the recent plan, which was developed 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 misinterprets the framework or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, 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 accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful 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 followed up on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated support of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help refine the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his first reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a durable peace will require both sides to consent to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of potential ideas for ending 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 called legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

“Rubio did make a call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a solid structure for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is based on input from the Moscow. But, it is also based on earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”