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On 10 October, Elon Musk — mid-fight with Reliance over Starlink’s entry into India — jabbed at Mukesh Ambani on X: “Dear Prime Minister Ambani… you are the real boss of India.”
It was meant as an insult. Look at the last twelve months and it stops sounding like one. Keep score.
October 2025. The US sanctions Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two biggest oil companies. India’s largest buyer of their crude is Reliance, whose Jamnagar complex is the biggest single-site refinery on earth. Reliance stops taking the oil.
March 2026. The pressure eases. The US Treasury signs a waiver letting Indian refiners buy Russian crude already at sea — even cargo on blacklisted ships. Within a week it goes global. Reliance goes back to Russian oil. By the July–September quarter, about a third of what Jamnagar refines is still Russian.
Reliance 1, India 0.
Mid-October 2026. Marco Rubio plans the first trip by a US Secretary of State to India with no meetings scheduled in Delhi — the destination is Mumbai and Jamnagar. Washington’s ambassador says India’s foreign minister is “expected” in Mumbai to meet him; Rahul Gandhi says Rubio “summoned his employee to Mumbai.” On 21 October the Ambanis walk Rubio through the Jamnagar refinery.
Reliance 2, India 0.
29 October. Alina Kabaeva’s “Alina” festival opens in Mumbai — its first time in Asia — at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, Reliance the partner. Russian state TV says the invitation came from Mukesh and Nita Ambani, and that Kabaeva’s foundation paid for the flights, hotels and production. Kabaeva — widely reported to be Vladimir Putin’s partner — has been under US sanctions since 2022. Photos from the night show her in the seat next to Mukesh Ambani.
Reliance 3, India 0.
So, in one year: India got the tariffs and a foreign minister told to turn up in Mumbai. Reliance got the waiver, the Secretary of State and the front-row seat — hosting Washington’s man one week and Putin’s circle the next.
Every one of these steps has an innocent answer, and they’re worth saying out loud before anyone cries conspiracy. The waivers were public US policy; Reliance only bought what Washington allowed. Rubio went to Jamnagar for oil — Venezuelan crude, a Reliance refinery planned for Texas — and said so. A cultural partnership isn’t a payment, and it was Kabaeva’s own foundation, not Reliance, that reportedly covered the festival. Pulled apart, each step has a clean explanation.
Put back together, they’re harder to wave away. Sanctions that bit on Russian oil bent for Indian refiners. The most powerful diplomat in the world treated a private refinery as the reason to come and the national capital as optional. And within a week of hosting him, the same family rolled out a stage — and a front-row seat — for someone Washington sanctions as part of Putin’s inner circle, while Delhi was left insisting its own foreign minister hadn’t been summoned to Mumbai.
The questions that would turn this from a pattern into a story are answerable ones. Did anyone working for Reliance push for the March waivers — US lobbying filings would show it. What did Reliance and its cultural centre actually put into the Kabaeva festival beyond a venue and an invitation. And who drew up Rubio’s itinerary, with Delhi left off it. Answer those, and you know whether this is a run of coincidences or simply how power now moves between Washington, Moscow and Mumbai.
Musk meant it as a jibe. On a year of this, the road to India really does seem to run through Jamnagar.
Sources: The Moscow Times / Bloomberg · Oilprice · Al Jazeera · The Wire · The South First / The Hindu · India Today / ANI · 5-TV · Agentstvo · VOA · US Treasury.
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