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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the White House's newest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's latest push to conclude the war.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or statesman, and his early attempts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

His close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a quick deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

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

Early Efforts and European Responses

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the war from resuming.

“Peace will not 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 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 instructed his team with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the proposal 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 administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, securing a durable ceasefire will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a set of possible solutions for resolving this war based on input from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. 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 initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“Rubio did make a call to us this day 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,” stated 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 later stated. “It is presented as a strong structure for ongoing discussions. It is based on input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”