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The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration newest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky first trip to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to accept a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a chaotic first year in power, international actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's top advisers, such as 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 latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed negotiators or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by smart 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 tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain position inside the administration to more stable standing.

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

But, his first response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to develop a set of potential ideas for resolving this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said 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 proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“Rubio made a phone call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers 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 fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong structure for ongoing discussions. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is additionally informed by previous and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”