Abiy Ahmed Says Ethiopia Has Taken Delivery of 12 Russian Su-35 Fighter Jets

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed holds a handover certificate in front of an Su-35 fighter jet bearing the Ethiopian flag.

Abiy Ahmed Says Ethiopia Has Taken Delivery of 12 Russian Su-35 Fighter Jets

October 28, 2026

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Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed holds a handover certificate in front of an Su-35 bearing the Ethiopian flag, in a photo he posted on Oct. 28. [Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia via X]

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Wednesday that Ethiopia has taken delivery of its first 12 Russian Su-35 fighter jets under an earlier agreement with Moscow and that the country will also receive four batteries of Russia’s S-400 air defense system, an announcement he made in Moscow as African leaders gathered for the third Russia-Africa summit.

“In accordance with our prior agreement with the Russian government, we have today taken delivery of the first twelve Su-35 4++ Generation fighter jets,” Abiy Ahmed wrote on X. He said the readiness being built within Ethiopia’s defense forces was giving the nation “the capability to preemptively deter aggression,” thanked “my friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin” for making sure the planes arrived a year ahead of the agreed schedule, and said that with these jets Ethiopia “has taken the lead among Sub-Saharan African nations.” In a second post with a video of the aircraft, he wrote in Amharic that the new jets make the country “more ready than ever” to protect its airspace.

The prime minister did not disclose the value of the agreement or where the aircraft and air defense batteries would be based, Reuters reported. Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms exporter, told Reuters that “the first batch of two Su-35 aircraft was delivered to the Ethiopian Air Force today,” without giving further details. On the Russian side, Alexander Mikheyev, the head of the state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, told the Vesti channel that the company “has delivered the first batch of Su-35 aircraft to the Ethiopian Air Force,” TASS reported. Interfax, citing the Vesti news service, said the aircraft were shown to their Ethiopian recipients on Wednesday at Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, and that the batch consisted of two planes. None of the Russian accounts gave a figure of 12. The open source analyst Rich Tedd (@AfriMEOSINT) posted pictures of what he said were the Ethiopian Air Force’s first two Su-35s, with tail numbers 2552 and 2551, and the number 2552 can be seen on the jet in the prime minister’s own photo.

The jets arrive while Abiy Ahmed’s regime is fighting wars on several fronts at home. In the Amhara region, fighting between federal forces and Fano has spread across South Gondar since Saturday, residents told DW, as Zegabi reported. In Tigray, the federal army and its allies have been fighting the forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front since a rebel alliance launched an offensive last month, which Reuters said rekindled a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people between 2020 and 2022. Reuters noted that air power, above all foreign-made drones, helped turn that earlier war in the government’s favor. The renewed fighting also led to the severing of ties with Eritrea, which the authorities in Addis Ababa accuse of backing the rebels and which Asmara denies backing, Reuters said. The Defence Blog recalled that Ethiopia flew older Sukhoi jets in its war with Eritrea two decades ago.

Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki also arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for the summit and a planned meeting with Putin, his information ministry said, and BBC Amharic reported that the two-day gathering, expected to draw representatives of about 50 African countries, would be the first time the Ethiopian and Eritrean leaders appear at the same event since diplomatic relations broke down completely. Russia has shown interest in mediating between Addis Ababa and Asmara, the BBC said.

On X, people read the announcement through the quarrels of the region. Abel Abate Demissie (@Abele_a), whose X bio says he is an associate fellow at Chatham House, wrote that Ethiopia’s “ongoing military preparedness and stockpiling likely target an external, larger-scale ‘enemy’, not a domestic one like the TPLF,” and that the timing was surprising because Russia “is a significant partner to both Eritrea and Egypt” and has promised to mediate between Ethiopia and Eritrea. “That may not sit well with Asmara,” he wrote. In Egypt, Ahmed Soliman (@Ahmad96969), who describes himself as an academic and a researcher on Israeli affairs, asked in Arabic how a country could sell weapons to Egypt and say it respects Egypt’s strategic interests “then at the same time sell advanced weapons to another state with which Cairo has one of the most dangerous regional crises,” a reference to the dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Hannaa Abdisa (@HannaaLido) welcomed the news in Amharic, writing that the new air force and defense systems were “a big step” to protect critical national infrastructure “including the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam,” although she wrote that the S-400 batteries had also been received, which the prime minister did not say. Replying to the analyst Rich Tedd, the account Isola Verde (@SimonGebregior3) dismissed the purchase. “Let them go on spend their cash dry,” it wrote, adding that “Ethiopia is getting poor inside out as we speak.”

Sources