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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. His strong connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or statesman, and his initial attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have called a capitulation.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's key advisers, such as top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Efforts and European Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, 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 endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed negotiators or officials residing in a dream world,” he added. “It might 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 tasked his staff with securing a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private 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 hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will necessitate each party to agree to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of possible solutions for ending this war based on feedback from each party of this war.”

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

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is offered as a strong structure for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is also based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”