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The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest effort to conclude the war.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the recent plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the White House to more firm footing.

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

But, his first reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will necessitate both sides to agree to challenging but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of potential solutions for ending this conflict based on feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to explain that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“Rubio made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It 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 later wrote. “It is offered as a strong framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”