🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to settle the conflict.

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

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a chaotic initial year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's top advisers, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by failed negotiators or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a durable peace will necessitate both sides to agree to challenging but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of potential ideas for resolving this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“Rubio 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,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently stated. “It is offered as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is also based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”