WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday urged China to use its “special relationship with Russia” to persuade Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

Beijing “cannot expect the global community to respect its calls for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity in the future if it does not respect those principles now,” Yellen told the Atlantic Council, a group of non-partisan thinking.

Yellen’s speech to the Atlantic Council comes a week before the world’s finance ministers and central bank governors gather in Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group. His direct appeal to China underscores the growing frustration of the United States and its allies with a country that has only deepened its ties with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.

“The world’s attitude toward China and its willingness to embrace deeper economic integration may well be affected by China’s reaction to our call for resolute action against Russia,” she said.

The United States and its allies have used sanctions to militarize the global economy against Russia because of its war in Ukraine. No country has yet overturned the sanctions, but allies fear China, which has criticized Western sanctions, may do so. Also of concern is India, which has taken a neutral stance on the Russian-Ukrainian war and recently made a major purchase of Russian oil, a source of tension with the United States as it tries to cut off energy revenues from Moscow.

Yellen said countries that undermine the sanctions that the United States and its allies have imposed on Russia will suffer the consequences of their actions.

“The unified coalition of sanctioning countries will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we have put in place,” Yellen said.

Yellen, leaving open the question of what the consequences of non-compliance with sanctions might be, said Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine has “redrawn the contours” of the global economy, which includes “our conception international cooperation in the future”.

The IMF and the World Bank hold an annual conference that deals with issues affecting the global economy. This year, the meetings will take place April 18-24 in Washington, both virtually and in person. The Russian invasion of Ukraine – and how world powers should handle the fallout on economies – will take center stage.

Yellen, responding to a question about how the prospect of global food shortages and rising inflation could affect political unrest globally, said: “It will be a pressing concern for us next week. , to try to think about how we can avoid starvation in the world.”

About 155 million people in 55 countries faced acute hunger in 2020, an increase of 20 million people from the previous year, according to the World Food Programme.

Yellen told a US House panel last week that Russia’s aggression in Eastern Europe will have “enormous economic repercussions in Ukraine and beyond”, adding that rising oil prices energy, metals, wheat and corn that Russia and Ukraine produce “will intensify”. inflationary pressures too.

The United States is currently facing historic inflation rates not seen since December 1981. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that prices in March were up 8.5% from a year ago.

As inflation began to rise before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the war has strained oil and gasoline supplies. Gasoline accounted for half of last month’s consumer price increase.

Yellen said she hopes cooperating countries can tackle the world’s biggest problems, despite the war.

“I see this,” she says, “as the right time to work to close the gaps in our international financial system that we are witnessing in real time.”

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