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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration newest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's recent push to conclude the conflict.

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

His strong relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

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

After a tumultuous first year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key advisers, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the recent proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Attempts and European Responses

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he added. “It could be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

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

Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a durable peace will require each party to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of possible solutions for ending this conflict drawing from feedback from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was presented to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”