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The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's latest effort to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a tumultuous first year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Concerns

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

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

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to challenging but essential compromises. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of possible solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from input from each party of this war.”

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 lawmakers to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary made a call to us this day and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from input from the Russian side. However, it is also based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”