US treasury secretary Janet Yellen on Friday warned India should be wary of Russia as a reliable partner though the issue of cheap crude from Moscow did not figure in her talks with finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

On a one-day visit to India, Yellen said: “Russia has long presented itself as a reliable energy partner. But for the better part of this year, Putin has weaponised Russia’s natural gas supply against the people of Europe. It’s an example of how malicious actors can use their market positions to try to gain geopolitical leverage or disrupt trade for their own gain.”

Yellen pitched for India to play an important role in handling debt restructuring for low and middle-income countries as a G20 leader.

The treasury secretary said that the US is pursuing an approach called “friendshoring” to diversify away from countries that present geopolitical and security risks to our supply chain.

“We are proactively deepening economic integration with trusted trading partners like India.

“We are also addressing our reliance on manufacturers whose approaches clash with our human rights values,” she said.

Yellen also called for diversifying the supply chain and reducing dependency on “risky countries” who use their market positions to try to gain geopolitical leverage or disrupt trade for their own gain. She said the global economic outlook at present is extremely challenging.

High inflation, she said, is a challenge that many advanced and developing countries face in common and central banks are trying to deal with the problems.

“In part this inflation reflects the spillover of Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine, which is boosting energy and food prices and for many emerging markets that have found themselves with high debts and high interest rates, the cost of moving higher energy and food costs are the things that have made debt unsustainable for some of them”.

US reprieve

The US Department of Treasury on Friday removed India along with Italy, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam from its currency monitoring list of major trading partners that merit close attention to their currency practices and macroeconomic policies. India had been on the list for the last two years.