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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's latest effort to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to agree to a quick settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's key advisers, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All criticism of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials residing in a dream world,” he added. “It could be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet 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 response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “And, achieving a durable peace will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a list of potential solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from input from each party of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more doubtful of the proposal. 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 initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is offered as a solid framework for ongoing discussions. It is based on input from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”