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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the war.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

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

Following a chaotic first year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's top aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the recent proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial attempts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

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

However, his initial reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a durable peace will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of potential ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“Rubio made a phone call to us this day and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was presented to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently stated. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”