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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent effort to conclude the conflict.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a chaotic first year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's key advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Initial Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning positions similar 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 endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials residing in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with obtaining a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation 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 palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a durable ceasefire will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a list of potential solutions for ending this conflict based on feedback from each party of this war.”

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

“The Secretary made a call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a solid structure for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is also informed by previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”