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America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest effort to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, who he studied and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky initial trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the recent plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, 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 maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that went to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help refine the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require both sides to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a list of potential ideas for resolving this war based on feedback from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to explain that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

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

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”