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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the war.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a quick deal that local officials have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head 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, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's early attempts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

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

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “It might be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was part of a US team that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help refine the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will necessitate both sides to agree to challenging but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of potential ideas for ending this conflict drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be 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 deal was just a initial offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer 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 align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is offered as a solid structure for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is based on input from the Moscow. But, it is additionally based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”