🔗 Share this article

America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the war.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or statesman, and his early efforts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, who he studied and shares a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to agree to a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

Following a chaotic first year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and prevent the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “It could be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state 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 footing.

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

However, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate each party to agree to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a set of possible ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The Republican senator 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 preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this day and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is offered as a strong framework for continuing discussions. The proposal is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”