🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his early attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

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

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a dream world,” he added. “It could be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

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 obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the proposal 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 uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

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

However, his initial reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, achieving a lasting peace will require each party to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to explain that the agreement was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“Rubio made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is offered as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”