Ethiopia Wants Rafales Because Abiy Is Preparing for War With Eritrea

Abiy announced on October 28, during the Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow, that Ethiopia had received 12 Su-35 fighters a year ahead of schedule and would also acquire four batteries of the S-400 air defence system, as Silent Dossier reported when the jets arrived. Russia’s arms exporter spoke of a first batch of two aircraft, but the photographs Abiy’s office released show the desert camouflage Russia painted on the Su-35s it built for Egypt.

Those are Egypt’s jets. Cairo ordered about two dozen Su-35s in 2018 and then walked away from the deal under the threat of US sanctions under the CAATSA law, which punishes countries that buy major Russian weapons. Russia had already finished the aircraft and put them in storage. They were later photographed in Algeria, which did not keep them. Few buyers wanted export-model Su-35s that carry a sanctions risk, so Moscow sent 12 to Ethiopia. Iranian state media now say Russia will deliver 12 Su-35s to Iran once its war ends, which would account for the rest of the airframes once meant for Cairo.

The S-400 batteries are another matter. Russia is short of air defences at home: its territory is enormous, Ukrainian drones keep finding gaps over strategic sites, and it cannot cover all of them with what it produces. Moscow could hand over a dozen surplus fighters. It is unlikely to ship four S-400 batteries to Addis Ababa any time soon.

Many commentators have treated the Su-35s as a threat to Egypt and then dismissed them, arguing that 12 fighters cannot fly to Egypt, strike and return. That misreads the purchase. Ethiopia is not buying Su-35s, or talking about Rafales, to bomb Cairo.

A Rafale is a jet for fighting a state: it carries long-range cruise missiles and modern air-to-air weapons and is built to beat an enemy air force and its air defences. It is wasted on militias in Tigray or Amhara. A country that wants Rafales next to its Su-35s is preparing for war with a neighbour, and Ethiopia has two candidates on its borders.

The first is Eritrea. Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara on October 1, and Eritrea answered by cutting diplomatic ties. Ethiopian officials accuse Eritrea of sending troops into northern Ethiopia since late September, Eritrean soldiers were reported inside Tigray from October 7, and Eritrea denies it. One Ethiopian ambassador has said Assab will be returned by force. The second is Sudan. Khartoum has filed complaints with the UN Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council accusing Ethiopia of letting drones that knocked out Sudanese power stations launch from its territory, part of a campaign Silent Dossier has tracked across Sudan’s grid. Ethiopia denies it and accuses the Sudanese army of backing Tigrayan rebels.

Egypt is bound to both. It signed a military cooperation agreement with Sudan in 2021 and has tied Eritrea to itself with security and port agreements since the Asmara summit of October 2024. Ethiopia also blames Egypt, without evidence, for stirring up the separatist movements behind its civil wars, and many in Addis Ababa want to settle that score. An Ethiopian war against either neighbour would be a war against Egypt’s partners.

Ethiopia, with roughly 130 million people, is the most populous landlocked country in the world. It lost its coastline when Eritrea became independent in 1993 after a 30-year war, and it fought Eritrea again from 1998 to 2000 over their border. Abiy made peace with Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, in 2018 and won the Nobel Peace Prize for it. The two then fought together against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in 2020 to 2022, but the alliance broke down after the Pretoria peace deal.

Since 2023 Abiy has called access to the Red Sea an existential question for Ethiopia, and his ministers describe the loss of the coast as a mistake to be corrected. The port in question is Assab, Eritrea’s southern harbour, less than 100 kilometres from the Ethiopian border. Eritrea reads every such speech as a threat to annex its territory. Abiy told parliament this autumn that Ethiopia would reach the Red Sea, the rebellion in Tigray resumed in September, and Eritrean and Ethiopian forces now face each other along a border that has no agreed demarcation. Silent Dossier has argued that this is a war Abiy cannot win. The Rafale talks suggest he is preparing to fight it anyway.

Egypt has handled the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam with a firm diplomatic grip. No British prime minister, Italian prime minister or US president goes to pose at the dam, because any foreign leader who visits it, even as a courtesy to Addis Ababa, is treated by Cairo as taking a hostile position. That pressure has kept the dam diplomatically isolated.

There is no such grip on Assab. Russia openly supports Ethiopia’s ambition to reach the sea, and it is training Ethiopian naval personnel. Ethiopia has even built a headquarters for a navy at Bishoftu, near Addis Ababa, although it has no port, no coastline and no ships. International discussion of Ethiopia’s access to the sea goes on as if a naval base on the Red Sea were a normal goal for a country with no shore. That is the reason the arms purchases matter. Ethiopia is building the instruments of a war for a coastline, and much of the world is treating the ambition as legitimate.

Few countries fly the Rafale, and France would find it hard to add Ethiopia to the list. Ethiopia’s pilots are trained on Russian aircraft and have no experience with the jet. Paris would also be selling to the main rival of Egypt, one of Dassault’s largest export customers.

Egypt bought 24 Rafales in 2015 and 30 more in 2021, and in September it asked Dassault for another 24, which would give it 78, as Silent Dossier set out in its analysis of Egypt’s Rafale buildup. That order is worth far more to France than seven jets for Addis Ababa. Ethiopia might instead look for second-hand or retired aircraft, as it has done with fighters before. Either way, the request shows what Ethiopia is getting ready for.