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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's recent push to settle the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

His strong relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous first trip to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course 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.

“Every objection of the peace framework the administration is working on either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early attempts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people operating in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

That was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the White House to more stable standing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that went 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 acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his first reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but essential compromises. That is why we are and will persist to develop a set of possible ideas for resolving this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, 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 lawmakers to explain that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the White House.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was presented to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a solid framework for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”