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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration newest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent push to settle the war.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky initial visit to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to accept a quick settlement that local officials have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, international actions 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 adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a agreement on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the government who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

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

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “And, achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of possible ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from input from each party of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative 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,” stated Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a solid framework for continuing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”