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America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the White House's newest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's recent push to conclude the war.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

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

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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 accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “It might be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated support of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

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

However, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require both sides to consent to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a list of possible solutions for ending this war based on input from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently stated. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”