🔗 Share this article

The US Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His close connection with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent effort to settle the conflict.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his early attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were labeled chaotic.

His close ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a chaotic initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's top advisers, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the recent plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he added. “It might be made by smart people living 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 primarily tasked his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more firm standing.

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

However, his first response to the deal was tepid:

“Ending a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, achieving a durable ceasefire will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of possible ideas for resolving this war based on feedback from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the White House.

“Rubio did make a call to us this day and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is offered as a solid framework for continuing discussions. The proposal is based on input from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”