The US Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration newest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.
Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.
Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, who he studied and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.
It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky initial trip to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.
After a chaotic first year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.
Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.
Vance's initial attempts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.
But, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.
In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to both sides, and prevent the war from restarting.
“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”
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 securing a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.
That was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more firm standing.
Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.
However, his initial reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:
“Ending a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a durable ceasefire will require both sides to agree to challenging but essential compromises. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of possible ideas for resolving this war drawing from input from each party of this war.”
In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.
“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was presented to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”
Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is presented as a solid structure for ongoing discussions. It is derived from input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”
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