🔗 Share this article

The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration newest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump latest push to settle the war.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

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

Vance's Role in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a quick deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some key reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians residing in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Private Concerns

That was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting 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 ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the agreement was just a initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a strong structure for ongoing discussions. The proposal is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is also based on earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”