🔗 Share this article

The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest proposal to end the conflict 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 conclude the conflict.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a quick settlement that local officials have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's top aides, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the recent proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is working on either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key situation on the ground,” the VP stated.

Initial Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t 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 presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a uncertain position inside the White House to more firm footing.

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

However, his first response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, securing a lasting ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a list of possible solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. The proposal is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”