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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong connection with JD Vance has positioned a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's latest effort to settle the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to agree to a swift settlement that local officials have called a capitulation.

Following a chaotic first year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's early attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It might be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

That was a notably more full-throated support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain position inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate each party to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of possible solutions for ending this war based on feedback from both sides of this war.”

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

“Rubio made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later stated. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for continuing discussions. It is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is also informed by earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”