40% - that's the share of India's crude imports coming from Russia in May, the highest in two years. The strange part is what happened to get there.

The oil India buys is telling a different story than the one it's selling A 40% import share sounds like a supplier relationship.

Look at the timing and it reads more like a series of reactions no one planned in advance. The pattern that shouldn't exist Basic import logic says: buy more of something when it's cheap, buy less when it's expensive. India's Russian crude imports have done the opposite twice over.

When Ukraine-war discounts made Russian Urals crude cheap, Washington leaned on New Delhi and imports were pulled back. Now that Iran-linked tensions have pushed Russian crude to a $46-per-tonne premium over the broader import basket, India is buying more of it than at any point in two years - import value up 83% while volume actually fell 2%.

Refiners are paying more for less oil from the one supplier whose exposure carries the most sanctions risk. That is not a diversification strategy responding to price signals. It's a series of one-off decisions each responding to whichever pressure was loudest that month - first American, now Iranian-supply anxiety pushing Gulf and Hormuz-dependent flows toward Russia and Venezuela instead.

Who actually carries the cost The premium and the currency arrangement both land on specific balance sheets, not an abstract "national interest." Indian state refiners settling part of these purchases in Chinese yuan get uninterrupted crude flow and sanctions insulation - but every yuan-settled barrel is a small, repeated contribution to internationalising the currency of India's principal regional rival, even while capital controls keep the arrangement from touching the rupee's domestic strength.

Meanwhile, narrowing discounts and weaker product cracks since February have already begun compressing gross refining margins - the gap between what a refiner pays for crude and earns on diesel or petrol, the number that decides whether a refinery expands or just survives.

Where this leaves the actual strategy India once ran roughly 70% of its crude sourcing through long-term Gulf contracts before the Russia pivot. That structure gave price certainty and diplomatic predictability. The current mix - Russia at a premium, UAE at record volumes chasing Hormuz risk, Venezuela rising as a hedge - has neither.

Strategic Petroleum Reserves sit at 5.33 MMT, a buffer that cushions weeks, not months, of the kind of disruption a Hormuz flashpoint could cause. For an aspirant, the real UPSC-relevant tension here isn't "should India buy Russian oil"

• it's the gap between the language of strategic autonomy that governments use to justify these purchases and an import pattern that actually shows a country responding to whoever applied pressure last, rather than one executing a plan it chose.