The question: can enough oil be diverted east for them to save face?
no. India does not consume nearly enough oil to make up the shortfall.
everyone seems to be missing the point. oil is a finite resource of which the worlds supply is tightly controlled by one group: OPEC- of which one country- Saudi Arabia largely dominates. it's not like every country just has a bunch of oil that they produce and export. Two countries: Saudi Arabia and Russia export about 30% of the worlds entire oil exports. There are like 200 countries in the f**king world. Throw in the US, UAE, and Iraq and you're at like 50%. That's 5 f**king countries. Exporting half the entire worlds oil. And you just cut the #2 guy out the picture. This is not good.
the US/EU are the #1 and #3 consumers of oil (China is #2) in the entire world by a wide margin (EU consumes 2.5x the oil #4- India does for example) - and both blocs are
stupidly and recklessly artificially limiting the supply of oil they can purchase by pretty much completely removing the worlds 3rd largest oil producer and 2nd largest oil exporter from their purchasable supply.
Supply and demand. US/EU are already suffering though record inflation and getting
HAMMERED by gas, food, electric, and heating price increases. This will only make it worse. Rapid oil price increase are BY FAR THE SINGLE LARGEST drivers of inflation. It's not even f**king close. You want inflation to go down....oil prices have to go down. This is only going to make them go up.
This does
ABSOLUTELY nothing but make idiot pols "feel better" maybe....give the appearance they are "doing something!" to fight the "bad guys". When in reality, all it does is crush the regular folks of the US/EU with INSANE inflation. Russia will continue to slaughter, bomb, and destroy Ukraine- they are not being stopped by this ridiculousness- and all that will happen is Russia will get whatever they want in Ukraine anyway.