MOSCOW, Aug. 20 - American envoy Kurt Volker is to meet his Russian counterpart Vladislav Surkov on Monday to try to restore peace in eastern Ukraine, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

Surkov, Moscow's point person, is a powerful Kremlin adviser who has played a central role in encouraging, organizing and managing the pro-Russia separatists fighting against Ukraine's central government, according to former rebel leaders and Ukrainian and Western officials.

A top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Surkov has been involved with the rebels, who hold sway over territory in eastern Ukraine, since early 2014, shortly after Russian forces seized the country's Crimean peninsula, these people say. He is under U.S. and European sanctions for his role in the annexation of Crimea.

"Putin is the father" of the separatist movement, said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who headed Ukraine's security agency during the first 15 months of the insurgency. "Surkov is the babysitter."

Surkov didn't respond to questions sent via the Kremlin press office.

Russia says it has influence with the separatists, but denies controlling them and presents the conflict in Ukraine as a civil war. It has said repeatedly that it supports the peace accords signed in Minsk, Belarus, an agreement aimed at reintegrating the breakaway region into Ukraine, but giving it more local autonomy.

But many on both sides of the years long conflict, as well as Western observers, say they believe Russia's aims are broader. They say Moscow really wants to trade peace in Ukraine for assurances Kiev won't get too close to the West and for an easing of the international sanctions imposed on Russia for grabbing Crimea and intervening with its military in the east.

The separatist movement "is a bargaining chip" in a bigger geopolitical game, said Aleksei Aleksandrov, a former top separatist official who now lives in Crimea and says he was pushed out of his leadership role by the Kremlin.

If Moscow doesn't get what it wants, said Nalyvaichenko, the former Ukrainian security chief, "they keep it burning," by supporting a low-intensity conflict that keep's Kiev's pro-Western government off balance.

U.S. and European officials say they won't bargain away Ukraine's political options. Russia's military interventions have united Ukrainian public opinion against Russia, polls show, making any political concessions to Moscow all but impossible for Kiev.

When the two envoys meet in Minsk, Volker is aiming to test the water as to whether the Kremlin is ready to move beyond the status quo and seek a resolution of the conflict, a U.S. official said.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon and the State Department are seeking approval from the White House for plans to supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other weaponry, plans that Russia has condemned as potentially inflammatory.

Surkov held meetings with a top U.S. State Department official, Victoria Nuland, in 2016 that were aimed at finding a breakthrough.

The discussions with Nuland appeared to make some progress on a potential handover of control of Ukraine's border to Kiev's control, according to people familiar with the talks, but halted when Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election and Nuland left her position. (dj/ez)