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The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration newest initiative to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His strong connection with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest effort to settle the war.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

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

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

After a tumultuous first year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's key aides, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, 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 accepting a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

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

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he added. “It might be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

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

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the proposal 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 part of a US delegation that went 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 acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will require each party to consent to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to create a list of possible solutions for ending this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

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

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was presented to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a solid framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Moscow. But, it is also informed by previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”