🔗 Share this article

America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the conflict.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a quick settlement that local officials have called a capitulation.

Following a chaotic first year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser 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 crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the war from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help refine the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable ceasefire will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, 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 strong framework for continuing discussions. The proposal is based on input from the Moscow. But, it is additionally based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”