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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent push to conclude the war.

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 turbulent.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial 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 accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal 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 peace framework the administration is working on either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views 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 forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the administration to more stable standing.

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

But, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, achieving a durable peace will require both sides to consent to challenging but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to create a set of potential solutions for ending this war drawing from input from each party of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more skeptical 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 agreement was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this day and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”