Abiy Unveils 12 Russian Su-35s as Ethiopia Fights Two Rebellions

Ethiopia has taken delivery of 12 Russian Su-35 fighter jets and intends to buy four S-400 air defence batteries, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced on X Wednesday. He posted the news from Moscow, where he was attending the two-day Russia-Africa Summit.

The warplanes landed a year ahead of schedule under an existing deal with Moscow, Abiy said, thanking Russian President Vladimir Putin for speeding up delivery. He set no date for the S-400 batteries, which are built to knock aircraft and missiles out of the sky. In a second post the same day, he called the jets newly deployed and said they would guard Ethiopian airspace; his first post said the hardware would sharpen Ethiopia's ability to 'preemptively deter aggression'.

The handover is the freshest evidence of a military partnership that has been thickening for years. Addis Ababa and Moscow signed a military cooperation agreement in July 2021 covering training and technology for Ethiopia's armed forces, and in January defence outlet Janes reported that Ethiopia had paraded newly acquired Russian Yak-130 jet trainers at its air force's 90th anniversary. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia supplied 15 percent of Africa's major weapons imports between 2021 and 2025, ranking as the continent's third-largest supplier.

Moscow has been courting African capitals for trade, investment and security deals while Western sanctions pile up over its war in Ukraine. The summit that opened Wednesday is the centrepiece of that push.

The announcement lands amid a sharp turn in Tigray. Government troops and allied forces entered the regional capital Mekelle on October 4 after Tigray People's Liberation Front fighters pulled back, and the TPLF has kept losing ground since. Addis Ababa has installed a six-month caretaker administration, but a TPLF commander urged continued resistance on television last week and the group claimed strikes on government-aligned troops in northwestern Tigray on Wednesday. The renewed war has effectively torn up the Pretoria peace agreement of November 2022, which ended two years of fighting that researchers at Belgium's Ghent University estimate killed roughly 500,000 civilians.

Federal forces are also tied down in the neighbouring Amhara region, where the Fano armed group has been battling them since 2023.