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The US Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of President Trump's latest effort to conclude the conflict.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his early attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky initial trip to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, international actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's key aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

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

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more firm footing.

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

But, his initial reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a list of possible ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to clarify that the deal was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

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

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. But, it is additionally informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”