🔗 Share this article

America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his early attempts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to agree to a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

Following a tumultuous first year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's top aides, 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 vocal supporter of the recent proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and European Responses

Vance's early attempts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

That was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm footing.

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

However, his initial reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will require both sides to agree to difficult but essential compromises. That is why we are and will persist to create a set of potential solutions for ending this war based on input from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

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

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally informed by earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”