🔗 Share this article

America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest proposal to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his early attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

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 once again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

Following a tumultuous first year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's key advisers, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“All criticism of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and European Responses

Vance's early efforts at hammering out 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, in turn, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated support of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a uncertain position inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went 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 response to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a durable ceasefire will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of possible ideas for resolving this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly 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 lawmakers to explain that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary did make 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 officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is offered as a solid structure for continuing discussions. It is based on feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”