🔗 Share this article

The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his early attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, who he studied and maintains a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

After a tumultuous first year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some key situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were angered by his early speeches, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

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

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the war from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

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

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

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

But, his first response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of possible solutions for ending this conflict drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the agreement was just a initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is offered as a solid framework for ongoing discussions. It is based on input from the Russian side. However, it is also informed by earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”