Kyiv, Ukraine – Since the dawn of his rule 25 years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his public relations team have carefully sculpted his image as that of a strong, stern macho man.

Russian television and Kremlin photographers have shown him wearing a judo uniform while throwing his opponents to the ground, playing hockey and scoring goals, horse-riding bare-chested, hunting, fishing and swimming.

What the ex-colonel with the KGB, the Soviet Union’s main intelligence agency, has almost never done in public was don a military uniform – despite his status of Russia’s commander-in-chief.

Not until Wednesday, when Putin was seen wearing green camouflage at a command post in the western region of Kursk next to Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov.

The first signal was that Putin was putting an end to one of the most humiliating developments of the Russian-Ukrainian war and his leadership.

Last August, Ukrainian forces occupied several hundred square kilometres in Kursk making the largest occupied town, the district centre of Sudzha, their “capital” for 215 days.

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It was the first time a foreign power occupied a piece of Russia’s European side since World War II – after Putin’s promises to “take Kyiv within three days”.

In 1969, Chinese forces briefly seized an island on the Ussuri river during a seven-month conflict between Moscow and Beijing.

Earlier this week, Russian forces with a little bit of brotherly help from elite North Korean troops pushed them out of Sudzha.

But Ukrainian forces still control half a dozen villages and farms in the westernmost part of Kursk that lies next to the border.

Putin visited Kursk for the first time since the occupation. His military garb’s symbolism went beyond the Kursk humiliation.

Some observers have interpreted Putin’s fashion choice as a silent yet firm “no” to the ceasefire deal the United States and Ukraine agreed upon after talks in Riyadh on Tuesday.

But to a Russian observer, Putin’s fashion choice was a non-verbal message about an “alternative” to the talks.

“Either Russia’s demands [on Ukraine] are accepted or the president is taking another form, another emanation of his position, i.e. the position of the supreme commander as the direct head of the armed forces of a nation at war,” analyst Andrey Pinchuk wrote in an op-ed for the pro-Kremlin Tsargrad television channel’s website.

Another occasion when Putin wore something that resembled a military uniform was in September 2022, when he was seen wearing a navy jacket during military and navy drills in Russia’s Pacific provinces.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov specifically pointed out that Putin’s choice of attire was related only to the “cold and windy weather”.

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A year earlier, Peskov said that despite his commander-in-chief’s title, Putin “didn’t have to wear a military uniform” even if he attends drills.

In Kyiv, a Ukrainian psychologist believed the uniform was meant to emphasise “how indifferent he is to all these peace initiatives and how he is determined to fight on and win” in Ukraine, said Svitlana Chunikhina, vice president of the Association of Political Psychologists in the Ukrainian capital.

“In response to a truce proposal, Putin for the first time donned a military uniform … What’s interesting is why he, all of a sudden, needed such an amplification, the doubling of his message,” she asked rhetorically.

She suggested that the uniform was too large and drowned Putin, who turned 72 last October and looked tired in the military gear.

“This is what’s called an excessive signal,” she said.

A Ukrainian war veteran agreed.

“Honestly, he looked like a rat. Which he is, hiding in the bunker and ordering the killing of women and little children,” Karen Ovsepyan, who demobilised after suffering a serious injury near the eastern town of Avdiivka in 2022, told Al Jazeera.

Ukrainians met Putin’s brief makeover with black humour.

Comedian Yuri Velikiy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former colleague with District 95, a comedic troupe that propelled the future leader to stardom, challenged his Instagram subscribers to “find 10 differences” between Putin and a photo of a small-framed Russian prisoner of war in a poorly fitting, oversize uniform.

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Another joke suggested that emaciated Putin looked like a “cheap Chinese knockoff” of his former self during Kremlin photo-ops.

And after all, Putin simply envies Zelenskyy, who made green fatigues his trademark attire, and “cosplays him”, said Kyiv-based political analyst Vyacheslav Likhachev.

The uniform also shows that Putin can get rid of his usual bespoke suits to poke fun at US President Donald Trump and his February 28 Oval Office spat with Zelenskyy over the latter’s decision to don fatigues.

Putin wants to “stress that here, in the trenches, in the clouds of powder smoke, the [Russian] motherland’s destiny is determined, not in some faraway Riyadh or the Oval Office,” Likhachev said.

But on a more serious note, Putin’s look also emphasised the importance of liberating Kursk before Moscow and Washington begin peace talks.

“It’s understandable how important it is to liberate the Kursk region before the talks begin – even if all the areas occupied by Ukrainian forces can’t be actually liberated,” Likhachev said.

Putin has for years nurtured the idea of seeing Ukraine subjugated, according to a Ukrainian official who held long talks with him on several occasions.

“He is tough and he behaves like he has this almost divine power, over Ukraine in particular,” Yuri Vitrenko, who met Putin while heading Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-controlled energy company, told this reporter in 2021.

“And I would not expect any kind of mercy or any kind of reciprocity or any kind of modern-world values from him,” he said months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022.

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It took Putin two days to respond to the US-Ukrainian offer of a ceasefire – and the answer sounded like a “yes” shrouded in layers of doubts and counter-conditions.

“We agree with the proposal to cease hostilities, but we have to keep in mind that the ceasefire must be aimed at a long-lasting peace and it must look at the root causes of the crisis,” Putin told a news conference on Thursday night.

He then suggested that Kyiv stop mobilising and training its troops and the West stop supplying arms to them.

“And what shall we do with the Ukrainian forces remaining in the Kursk region?” he said. “We are in favour of [the ceasefire], but there are nuances,” he concluded.

He was wearing a suit and tie.