🔗 Share this article

The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's recent push to conclude the conflict.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his early attempts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous first visit to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

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

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the recent plan, which was crafted 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 framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

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

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

That was a distinctly more full-throated support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional 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 weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his initial reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a durable peace will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to create a list of potential solutions for ending this conflict drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”