With more than 2,000 dead and much of central Myanmar in ruins after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake, Min Aung Hlaing is having his moment to show the country's 54 million people why his military should run the country.
Having overthrown the people's democratically chosen government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces has waged war on multiple fronts against various armed groups in the past three years, saying last week that his troops were fighting a "just war".
Now, the 68-year-old's response to the biggest natural disaster to strike Myanmar in years is under scrutiny, as other countries and international aid agencies rush millions of dollars worth of assistance into the impoverished nation.
Within a day, rescue teams from Myanmar's close friends China and Russia were allowed to fly into Yangon, along with state media workers to document their efforts.
India, Singapore, Thailand and Japan have also sent supplies or personnel.
But multiple Western aid agencies said they've struggled to get personnel into the country, instead trying to organise supplies through their existing local partners.
The US State Department only confirmed on Monday that American aid would be allowed in.
Attempts by international journalists to fly in and document the extent of the damage and the government's response have also been thwarted.
An official of the State Adminstration Council, the military's junta central governing body, said "we cannot host foreign journalists in this difficult situation".
The secrecy at a time when the international community is seeking to help isn't surprising for a country locked in a civil conflict, with regular allegations from opposition groups about human rights abuses from government soldiers.
The leader of Myanmar's ruling military junta, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, said he saw "mistakes in engineering methods" when visiting the damaged areas.
"Some buildings were carelessly built without proper measurements," he said.
"Some buildings were built cheaply, without spending enough money on them.
"When the buildings were constructed without consideration of impact of earthquake, the loss was huge when the earthquake emerged."
But it's the actions of Min Aung Hlaing's air force in recent days that have shocked many observers.
Despite calls from some armed opposition groups as well as organisations like the United Nations for a temporary pause in military actions, the Myanmar Air Force has carried out aerial strikes on four separate targets, including in Sagiang, one of the worst affected areas.
The strikes continued a recent increase in drone and aircraft-deployed bombings of opposition armed groups, in what has increasingly become a territorial stalemate, with military controlling only about half the country.
Outside observers assumed rescuing earthquake victims and beginning the mammoth repair job would take priority.
"Instead of having an all-hands-on-deck focus on saving lives, they're taking lives," said Tom Andrews, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.
"It's unconscionable."
Within Myanmar, there are conflicting reports about the extent to which the junta's ruling State Administration Council is allowing rescue teams from other opposition-held areas to help in the hardest-hit regions.
A spokesman for one armed opposition group, the Karen National Union, Pado Saw Taw Nee, says a rescue team from Karen state was initially blocked by the military from travelling to Sagaing and Mandalay before being let through a day later.
It aligns with reports from hard-hit Sagaing that soldiers were blocking rescue teams entering from the west because they were worried opposition fighters were covertly trying to enter junta-controlled areas.
"They were only allowing food and water through, so people in Sagaing didn't have any rescue teams and no-one to help," said a woman in Bangkok who had communicated with family in Sagaing.
A spokeswoman for the UN's World Food Program based in Yangon, Melissa Hein, said access in that area is challenging.
"What's really needed is both resources but also unhindered humanitarian access," she said.
"The World Food Program has been assisting people there, but not to the degree that we would like because of the challenges on the ground," she said.
As aid increasingly heads into Myanmar, opposition groups there are urging international aid donors to be careful with how they distribute aid.
"During cyclone Nargis in 2008, which killed 130,000 people, the junta weaponised the humanitarian aid," said Pado Saw Taw Nee.
"It didn't effectively reach the people in need and humanitarian aid was used for the military, so we urge the international community to be careful about that."
The fallout from the earthquakes has been forecast to potentially include a staggering number of deaths and financial cost to Myanmar.
The US Geological Survey's predictive modelling has estimated the death toll could eventually surpass 10,000 and losses could exceed the country's annual economic output.
Sanctions and promises of democracy
The decision to keep up the air strikes is in line with a leader who earned a reputation for brutality over his long military career.
Last year, a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague requested an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing, alleging crimes against humanity and genocide of the persecuted ethnic minority Rohingya group.
The US, Canada, UK and European Council all imposed sanctions on him in 2022 after he launched the coup that saw Nobel laureate and democracy icon Suu Kyi thrown in jail for 27 years on charges she denies.
She remains under house arrest in the capital Naypyidaw, which was also hard hit by the earthquake.
According to a New York Times profile of Min Aung Hlaing last year, he rose through the ranks as a career military officer after earning a reputation as a bully at Myanmar's Defence Services Academy in the late 1970s.
He was a relatively low-profile figure until 2009, when his forces drove tens of thousands of people from two ethnic enclaves, one near the Thai border, the other closer to China.
His forces were accused of murder, rape and arson, but within two years Min Aung Hlaing was promoted to commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Rights groups said similar tactics were used by the military in the following years against the Rohingya ethnic group.
Despite this hardline reputation, Min Aung Hlaing was just a day before the earthquake spruiking his plans for democratic elections in Myanmar at the end of this year.
Despite bans on multiple political parties and the continued detention of opposition figures, he told an audience that the military will hand power to whichever party wins.
But with the earthquake prompting a new state of emergency in the country, experts say those plans, if they were ever genuine, are now at risk.
"You can't have an election under conditions where opposition figures are jailed and the junta only controls half the country, it would be laughable," said Tom Andrews.
"So will the earthquake affect those plans? Who knows. But I don't think the broader situation will change."
