🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration newest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent push to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, who he studied and shares a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial trip to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

Following a chaotic initial year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's top advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All objection of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or officials living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated support of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of potential ideas for ending this war drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed 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 delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently stated. “It is presented as a solid structure for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”