Ukraine’s escalating drone advertising campaign against Russian oil infrastructure is disrupting uncouth flows to India, Moscow’s single largest buyer.
Indian refiners had been scaling abet purchases of Russian uncouth as assaults on key export terminals and refineries develop power provide bottlenecks. The disruptions heart on the Novorossiysk terminal, which handled roughly 840,000 barrels per day destined for Indian investors earlier than the strikes intensified.
A unstable import characterize
India’s imports from Russia dropped to roughly 1.14 to 1.24 million barrels per day in December 2025, pushed largely by tighter sanctions on indispensable Russian producers fancy Rosneft and Lukoil. However the image shifted dramatically by mid-2026, when imports surged to a fable average of roughly 2.6 million barrels per day in June, constituting over half of of India’s complete oil imports.
The assaults maintain reportedly knocked out up to 40% of Russian refining capability in the end of peak strike sessions in 2026. The damage to export terminals and logistics networks way that uncouth most ceaselessly can’t bag out the door efficiently.
Russia has stumbled on itself in the irregular location of importing gasoline from Indian merchants. Moscow ships uncooked uncouth to India at a bargain, India refines it, and a few of that refined product circles abet to Russia because Russian refineries can’t meet domestic quiz.
Direct vs. non-public: two utterly different playbooks
Direct-bustle giants fancy Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Tiny maintain maintained comparatively stable import flows by sourcing from compliant channels. Their government backing gives them more political quilt and less sensitivity to sanctions threat.
Reliance Industries, India’s largest non-public refiner, has intermittently diminished its Russian uncouth purchases, specifically in the end of sessions of heightened sanctions enforcement. Within the immediate aftermath of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian Urals uncouth traded at deep reductions to worldwide benchmarks, in most cases $20 or more below Brent. By 2026, some sessions aloof provide indispensable reductions while others maintain seen margins tighten to the purpose where Russian uncouth trades at premiums, reckoning on logistics costs and geopolitical threat pricing.
Predominant Indian investors in the most modern landscape consist of IOC, Nayara Energy, and BPCL, with Reliance occupying a more cautious, on-yet again-off-yet again scheme.
Global provide pressures compound the predicament
India imports over 80% of its uncouth oil wants, making it one in all the most uncovered indispensable economies to provide disruptions. Tensions in the Heart East are threatening chokepoints fancy the Strait of Hormuz, that way both Russian provide routes and Heart Japanese corridors may perhaps possibly perhaps face simultaneous disruptions.
Tanker rates on routes from Russia’s Baltic and Sunless Sea ports to India maintain already mirrored the uncertainty, with periodic spikes in the end of intensified Ukrainian strikes. The pricing of Russian Urals uncouth relative to Brent remains unstable as Ukrainian assaults continue to disrupt the logistics chain.
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