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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His close relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to settle the conflict.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

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

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

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. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every criticism of the peace framework the White House is working on either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some key situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with obtaining a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

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

Rubio was part of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, securing a lasting ceasefire will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will continue to create a list of potential solutions for ending this war drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this day and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document 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 stated. “It is offered as a strong framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”