🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump recent push to settle the war.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

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

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

After a chaotic first year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

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

Early Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's early attempts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to produce a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the war from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a notably more full-throated support of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past 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 reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, securing a lasting peace will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to develop a set of possible ideas for resolving this war based on input from each party of this war.”

In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to explain that the deal was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“Rubio did make a call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently stated. “It is offered as a solid framework for ongoing discussions. It is based on input from the Moscow. However, it is also based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”