🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's latest push to conclude the war.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's key aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some key situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Attempts and European Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

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

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was part of a US team that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his initial reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to develop a set of possible ideas for resolving this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more doubtful 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 clarify that the deal was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is presented as a strong structure for ongoing discussions. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”