There was two phases of the pivot towards aiding Ethiopia - the first, where the Soviets tried to cut off supplies from Somalia to encourage them to end the invasion, and the second, where the Somali regime renounced the Soviets in hopes of getting aid from another foreign sponsor (the US, Arab states, and China).

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At the outbreak of war, the Soviets were working on bringing the relatively new Derg regime into their sphere of influence. Somalia had already been a Soviet client for some time, receiving weapons and training in return for the establishment of a Soviet naval base at Berbera on the north coast. In the leadup to the war, the Siad Barre regime in Somalia had been funneling a lot of the Soviet-supplied equipment across its borders into neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya to sponsor irredentist rebel movements. These were a major point of contention for some time, and in 1964 there was a brief clash between Somali and Ethiopian forces over this issue. When the Ethiopian Revolution happened in 1974, the country quickly descended into chaos, and things only seemed to deteriorate as the Derg regime consolidated power with purges and alienated its primary foreign sponsor, the United States. The Soviets were in the process of swooping in to fill this void, and Cuban internationalist efforts would lead to the heavy involvement of Castro on the diplomatic front in an effort to create a pro-Soviet federation of Somalia, Ethiopia, and Yemen - something that would give the Soviets control over the entrance to the Red Sea.

Somalia's abrupt invasion in 1977 shattered all of these hopes. In retrospect, it wasn't much of a surprise - Ethiopia was descending into chaos and Somalia was in an excellent position to press its irredentist claims - but it was a major surprise to the Soviets in Cubans. The Soviets held onto the hope of preserving relations with Somalia while continuing to bolster them with Ethiopia, so they tried to stall the Somali offensive by choking off equipment in hopes of persuading them to withdraw.

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Unfortunately for all involved, Siad Barre had different plans. Unwilling (and likely politically unable) to withdraw and desperately short on supplies, Barre made a gamble for anti-Soviet aid. He severed all relations with the Soviets, ejecting them from their freshly-completed base in Berbera and giving all Soviet citizens 48 hours to evacuate the country. The hope was that the US would quickly swoop in to secure the strategically located country as an ally, but the Carter Administration had no intentions of supporting a regime openly waging an unprovoked war of aggression. Barre found more support in other anti-Soviet regimes with fewer ethical qualms, namely Communist China and Yugoslavia, as well as some of the Arab States, but any aid would take some time to materialize. And having just proverbially slapped a superpower in the face, any aid would have to come quick to make a difference.

Because by all accounts, the Soviets were enraged by Barre's revoking of the base. They had a change of heart - no longer were they trying to negotiate a solution while exercising soft power to pressure Barre to back down. Instead, they launched their largest airlift effort since WW2. Planes were landing in Addis Ababa as fast as they could pull them off the runways. Ships were sailing into Massawa bringing in armor and heavier equipment. Aircraft were diverted from East Germany and Yemen to bolster the effective but critically short on equipment Ethiopian Air Force. And most significantly, 50,000 Cuban soldiers were flown in to serve on the front lines in what became the centerpiece of a major counteroffensive.

The counteroffensive the Ethiopian/Cuban forces launched, coincidentally, happened to fall on the very same day as the last Somali offensive. The Somalis, having brought what little they could scrounge up to the front, launched an attack at Ethiopian positions at Dire Dawa, completely unaware that they were running headlong into a buildup of men, tanks, and artillery. Needless to say, the Somalis were repulsed, and the counteroffensive that followed pushed the Somalis back to Jijiga. As the Ethiopian army approached the Somali front at Jijiga, the Cubans swung north and landed soldiers and armor (the only airborne armored assault in history) behind Somali lines. When the assault on Jijiga began, Somali forces were quickly routed, and stragglers were chased back to the border.

By this point, Somalia had thoroughly burned its bridges with the Soviets and had driven Ethiopia firmly into the hands of the Eastern Bloc. Somalia had become a nominal US client, while the Soviets and Cubans would become increasingly invested in Ethiopia as a civil war raged until the fall of the USSR, when Soviet/Cuban support was withdrawn and the Derg regime collapsed.