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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest push to settle the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his early efforts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were described as chaotic.

His strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a quick settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous first year in power, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the latest 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 ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians residing in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat 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 team that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point peace plan 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 conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a lasting peace will require both sides to consent to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a set of potential ideas for ending this war based on feedback from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this day and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was presented 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. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later stated. “It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”