(Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the Biden administration’s proposed spending on international aid and investment programs, exemplified by assistance for Ukraine, would strengthen Washington’s leadership abroad and advance US security interests.

“There is perhaps no place where our impact is felt more acutely than in Kyiv,” Yellen says in prepared remarks she’s scheduled to deliver beginning at 10 a.m. Wednesday to a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

“In my trip to Ukraine last month, I heard personally about how our coalition’s work has enabled Ukraine to defend itself against a brutal and illegal assault by Russia,” she said.

On that trip, Yellen met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. She also visited teachers and administrators at a school damaged by a missile strike in the first month of the war. Their salaries are financed with direct budgetary assistance from the US.

The Treasury chief, in a swipe at China, told lawmakers in the prepared remarks that the administration’s request for $2.3 billion for the World Bank and other multilateral development banks would provide developing countries a “sustainable, high-quality alternative to non-transparent sources of borrowing.”

China is the largest lender to developing world but has been criticized for refusing to take part in debt-relief agreements for several struggling nations and for the lack of transparency in the terms of its lending.

Yellen said she expects President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the World Bank, former Mastercard Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ajay Banga, will win election by the bank’s shareholders. 

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