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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest effort to settle the conflict.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

His strong relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have called a surrender.

Following a chaotic first year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's key aides, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the administration is working on either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or officials residing in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with securing a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the White House to more firm footing.

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

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will require both sides to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of potential solutions for resolving this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to explain that the deal was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“Rubio 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 proposal that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Russian side. However, it is also based on earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”