Madar (Addis Ababa) - Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, that his country has received 12 Russian Su-35 fighter jets and will also acquire four S-400 air defence batteries, Al Jazeera English reported, citing Reuters.
Abiy made the announcement on X during a visit to Moscow for the two-day Russia-Africa Summit. He said the warplanes had arrived a year earlier than expected under an existing agreement with Moscow and thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for speeding up the delivery. He gave no date for the arrival of the S-400 batteries, designed to shoot down aircraft and missiles.
Abiy said the new equipment would strengthen Ethiopia's ability to "preemptively deter aggression". In a second post, he described the jets as newly deployed and said they would defend Ethiopian airspace.
The announcement reflects a growing military partnership between the two countries, which signed a military cooperation agreement in Addis Ababa in July 2021. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia supplied 15 percent of Africa's imports of major weapons between 2021 and 2025, making it the continent's third-largest supplier.
It comes as Ethiopian forces fight renewed battles with rebels in Tigray, where government troops and allied forces entered the regional capital Mekelle on October 4 after Tigray People's Liberation Front fighters withdrew, and a separate rebellion by the Amhara armed group Fano since 2023.
According to the same source, the renewed war has effectively undone the peace agreement signed in Pretoria in November 2022, which ended two years of fighting.
