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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's newest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as chaotic.

His close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's top aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“Every objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials residing in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

That was a distinctly more full-throated support of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his first response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, securing a durable ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of potential ideas for resolving this conflict based on feedback from each party of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to explain that the agreement was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“Rubio made a phone call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized 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 recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is offered as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is additionally informed by earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”