My real idea for this is that Russia is looking for another nation that might actually make their launches for them. The excuse of placing them in the same orbit is just cover.
They must be planing on not having launch facilities available inside Russia.

Its also a nice way of not paying rent or having to pay for maintenance and infrastructure updates. Let India do it instead.

Was it all cash, an agreement for India to keep making a few for Russia, An agreement to keep buying oil from Russia as part of the deal?

I am not mad at India for accepting this deal. They might have perfectly fine rocket engines but The proven designs of Russia are valuable. Can India freely sell those engines to other nations without Russian permission?

RD-175 was to be even more powerful at 9,800 kN thrust as per the wiki on RD-170.

RD-180 was just RD-170 cut in half—and RD-191 an even weaker single nozzle deal.

All kerolox.

On A.I. and propulsion
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-ai-spacecraft-propulsion-efficient-nuclear.html
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5105/1

Russia is apparently now willing to sell the complete design and manufacturing recipe of one of Roscosmos’s crown jewels to at least one most-favored nation. Had the Russo-Ukraine War not stretched Russia’s finances to a near-breaking point I don’t think this deal would ever have been done and certainly not on the terms the Indians apparently managed to demand. Russia doubtless shopped its Energomash engines to the PRC also, but that nation would likely not have offered nearly as much for the IP as it already has a number of its own large kerolox engines in production.

One cannot but wonder whether talks aimed at securing comparable deals for other Russian space technologies are not already on-going between Russia and India.