A week ago, Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed Joe Biden to Ukraine.

A day later, Sergei Lavrov welcomed Wang Yi to Russia, where he enjoyed an overtly cordial chat+ with Vladimir Putin.

Tomorrow, Xi Jinping will welcome Alexander Lukashenko to China.

And today, Ukraine welcomed Janet Yellen to Kyiv.

Suffice to say there’s a lot of symbolism going on.

Fresh from a G-20 finance ministers’ meeting in India where a dispute over how to describe the conflict in eastern Europe prevented the release of a joint communique, Yellen was greeted by air raid sirens in Zelensky’s besieged capital. Like Biden, she traveled in secret, by train, arriving just hours after the country fended off another wave of Russian drone attacks.

Yellen, you’re reminded, personifies the sanctions regime against Russia. The measures adopted against the Kremlin since the onset of the war are primarily Treasury sanctions. In addition, Yellen is the face of America’s financial assistance to Ukraine, and she’s variously echoed Biden in insisting that the US intends to stick by Zelensky for “as long as it takes.”

On Monday, she visited a school and spoke to teachers who are paid with US financial aid. Yellen also announced, in person, the disbursement of a $1.25 billion tranche of new funding. While in India, Yellen called on other nations to chip in. She’s also spearheading the push for a long-term IMF program worth more than $15 billion.

Whatever Ukraine is able to fund with Western financial assistance, Putin is keen to destroy with missiles, whether that means targeting infrastructure or school teachers, like those Yellen visited Monday. I mean that literally. The teachers she visited work at a school that was partially destroyed by a Russian missile.

In conjunction with her visit to Kyiv, Yellen published an Op-Ed in The New York Times. “Ukraine’s heroic resistance is the direct product of the courage and resilience of Ukraine’s military, leadership and people, but President Zelensky would be the first to admit that they can’t do this alone, and that international support is crucial to sustaining their resistance,” Yellen wrote, adding that US aid kept half a million health care workers in their jobs in 2022, supported 60,000 first responders and allowed hundreds of thousands of teachers to stay in classrooms.

Consider how that impedes the Russian war effort. Caring for the wounded, whether civilians or Ukrainian soldiers, would be impossible with 500,000 fewer nurses, doctors and support staff. The civilian death toll from indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian cities would be far larger if 60,000 first responders weren’t on the job. This is one reason the Syria playbook isn’t working as well for Putin. He isn’t able to kill as efficiently.

Of course, as Yellen readily acknowledged, military aid is crucial too, and she alluded to the notion that even if some Americans don’t agree with a blank check policy for arms shipments, the public at least understands why a country trying to defend itself from an invading army needs weapons. Her point in the Op-Ed was to emphasize that non-lethal US aid and non-military economic assistance is likewise “foundational” to the Ukrainian resistance.

Her pitch in that regard was simple: “We cannot allow Ukraine to lose the war for economic reasons when it has shown an ability to succeed on the battlefield.”

During his address to a joint session of Congress in December, which some Republicans boycotted, Zelensky was anxious to dispel concerns over corruption and the possible misappropriation of international aid. That issue came to the fore last month, when Zelensky dismissed top officials for alleged malfeasance. In remarks to Bloomberg, Yellen described Ukraine’s handling of the economy and its finances as “frankly, exemplary” under the circumstances.

In the same Op-Ed for the Times, Yellen said she’ll continue to “systematically” dismantle Putin’s military-industrial complex, adding that she “will not rest until the war is over.” Obviously, Yellen used “we,” “our” and “coalition” rather than “me,” “I” and “the US Treasury,” but the message was clear enough: She’s done some damage, but whether she says it out loud or not, she’s aware that Russia has proven just as resilient economically as Ukraine has militarily, which means the job isn’t finished.

Bottom line: Putin is determined to break the Ukrainian military, and Yellen is determined to break the Russian economy and financial system. Neither has had much success in their respective endeavors thus far. And so, it continues, with no end in sight.

Commenting late last week on China’s ceasefire proposal, Zelensky said that although he “wants to believe” Beijing is genuinely interested in facilitating a “fair peace,” he emphasized he’d do everything in his power to stop Xi from supplying weapons to Putin. Zelensky called that “priority number one.”