WASHINGTON-backed organisations describing themselves as charities are leading the charge for the scrapping of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 and increased sanctions against Moscow.

In an email to the Morning Star, International Renaissance Foundation executive director Oleksandr Sushko called on Western countries to act against Russian aggression and warned of a European security crisis.

He described Ukraine as “Europe’s democratic frontier,” ignoring the fact that democracy was usurped in the country in 2014 when the European Union backed a coup against the government of elected president Viktor Yanukovich and that Kiev continues to suppress political critics, including by a ban on the Communist Party standing in elections and through media censorship.

Mr Sushko claimed that Russia was manufacturing the crisis to assert control over Europe, despite Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky calling on Western media to tone down the hysteria over an allegedly imminent invasion, accusing them of creating panic in the country.

“Europe and the international community must support Ukraine against Russian neo-Soviet authoritarian imperialism,” he said.

“The West can support Ukrainian freedom by withholding regulatory approval for Nord Stream 2 and must strengthen efforts to track Russian dirty money and immediately freeze the assets of the regime.”

A far from an independent commentator, Mr Sushko previously worked as research director for the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Co-operation,  a political action committee based in Ukraine that lobbies for Kiev’s membership of Nato and the EU.

His former employer is funded by Western donations, including from USAid, and lists Nato and the shady National Endowment for Democracy as its partners.

The International Renaissance Foundation was founded in 1990 and is described as “an integral part” of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.

It has spent more than $100 million (about £74m) on funding NGOs, civil society groups and media organisations in Ukraine.

One of the main priorities of the foundation is financially supporting projects that encourage European integration.

Along with the National Endowment for Democracy, it funds the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre, which aims to control the media narrative on the country and collaborates with the US embassy there.

Kiev has been accused by the Communist Party of Ukraine of waging an “information genocide” by shutting down opposition news channels.

Last week, the official YouTube accounts of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics were closed without warning, triggering accusations of censorship.

Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which was completed in September last year, is opposed by Washington, which has threatened to block it from operating altogether.

US companies aiming to supply liquified natural gas to Europe are believed to be among the main beneficiaries should the project collapse.