The announcement came not from a parade ground in Addis Ababa but from a social media post written in Moscow. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took to X to tell the world that Ethiopia has received 12 Russian Su-35 fighter jets, and that four S-400 air defence batteries are to follow.
The summit market
Abiy made the announcement during a visit to Moscow for the two-day Russia-Africa Summit, the gathering at which, as Al Jazeera reported, Russia is seeking closer security and economic ties with African countries. The Moscow Times adds that the S-400 systems will be delivered later, as part of a push to bolster Ethiopia’s military capabilities. Twelve fighters now, four missile batteries later: such is the arithmetic of a summit where influence is bartered in hardware.
War at home
Ethiopia, meanwhile, is a country fighting itself. The government is battling armed groups in Tigray and Amhara, and Business Insider Africa reports that the delivery of the jets was fast-tracked — they arrived ahead of schedule — amid renewed internal conflict and rising security threats. In regions where fighting has become part of daily existence, the arrival of twelve supersonic aircraft is no abstraction of geopolitics. It changes what the sky means to the people underneath it.
There is an old pattern in this, one that repeats from continent to continent: a government pressed by its own citizens at home goes abroad to buy reassurance, and returns with wings. The Su-35s are already on the ground. The S-400s remain a promise. And in Tigray and Amhara, the war goes on, indifferent to the announcements of capitals.