Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has been declared president of the country in the capital city of Damascus, Syrian state news SANA reported on Wednesday. He leads the Syrian Interim Government, comprising of various rebel groups who toppled the decades-long Assad regime in a lightning offensive last December.

“We will work to form a comprehensive transitional government that expresses the diversity of Syria,” al-Sharaa said in his first national address as president. “With its men, women and youth, and will undertake the work of building Syria’s new institutions until we reach a stage of free and fair elections.”

The new government has authorized al-Sharaa to form a legislative council with a constitution adopted in the near future, according to the SANA report which cited an announcement by rebel commander Hassan Abdel Ghani.

He also announced that the 2012 constitution would be suspended, as well as Assad-era governmental agencies, including parliament. 

All rebel groups who partook in the successful offensive, which saw the collapse of ousted Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s government, will be disbanded, and are being ordered to integrate themselves into the government, according to Abdel Ghani. 

Since the declaration on Wednesday, al-Sharaa has requested Russia to hand over al-Assad according to a Reuters report, who fled to Moscow on Dec. 8 as rebel groups closed in on the capital, hours before rebels declared the end of the regime.

The Kremlin has yet to comment on this request. However, it is in talks with Syria’s new government regarding its military bases in Latakia and Tartus, according to Reuters.

Assad, considered to be then Russia’s only ally in the Middle East, held onto power with Russian and Iranian help after mostly peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations were held across the country during the 2011-2013 Arab Spring.

Regional leaders such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali were toppled. However, Assad stayed in power, as regime forces infamously fired live ammunition at demonstrators, which triggered the civil war. Rebel factions from secular to Islamist would form, loosely united to topple Assad’s despotic regime.

Al-Sharaa was the leader of one of the Islamist groups, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), previously an al-Qaeda affiliate which sought to distance itself from terrorism and hardliners in its base in the northwestern province of Idlib.

HTS is a designated terror organization by the United Nations, United States, and European Union. The US government has already planned to take the group and its leader off the list, according to information given to Islamic by an aide to the transitional government.

In November of last year, HTS led the rebel offensive alongside the Türkiye-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), another rebel group, which toppled Assad’s regime in roughly two weeks.

Since then, HTS had been leading the government, with al-Sharaa as de facto leader, appointing his allies in Idlib to head key ministries.

Despite the transitional government’s Islamist leanings, al-Sharaa on Thursday promised to create an inclusive government for Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.