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America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration newest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. His close connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's recent effort to conclude the conflict.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his early efforts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky initial visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to agree to a swift settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a chaotic first year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's top advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the recent proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

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

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

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting peace will require each party to agree to challenging but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of potential solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to explain that the deal was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this day and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. It is based on input from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”