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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest initiative to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent push to settle the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial visit to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key aides, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“Every criticism of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were angered by his early speeches, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new peace deal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly 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 Internal Concerns

That was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was part of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, securing a durable peace will require both sides to agree to challenging but essential compromises. That is why we are and will continue to develop a set of possible solutions for ending this war based on input from each party of this war.”

In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the deal was just a initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

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

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a strong structure for continuing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”