🔗 Share this article

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

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a surrender.

Following a tumultuous initial year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the latest plan, 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 administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's initial attempts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with obtaining a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has transitioned 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 past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, securing a durable ceasefire will require both sides to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to develop a set of potential ideas for ending this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

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

“The Secretary made a call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized 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 peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is additionally informed by previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”