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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration newest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's latest effort to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist VP in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a quick deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Initial Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored 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 peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm footing.

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

However, his first reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “And, securing a durable peace will require each party to agree to challenging but essential compromises. That is why we are and will persist to create a set of possible solutions for ending this conflict based on input from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, 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 legislators to explain that the deal was just a initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

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