U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced the lifting of U.S. sanctions against Turkey and defended his abrupt pullout from Syria, saying "let someone else fight" over the "blood-stained" country. 

In a White House speech, Trump described the truce as a "major breakthrough" negotiated by a team led by Vice President Mike Pence. Trump said he instructed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to rescind sanctions imposed on Turkey after it attacked the Kurds "unless something happens that we are not happy with". 

"Countless lives are now being saved as a result of our negotiation with Turkey, an outcome reached without spilling one drop of American blood: no injuries, nobody shot, nobody killed," Trump said. 

He said he may meet Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan soon. 

The speech failed to blunt attacks from U.S. lawmakers over Trump's abrupt decision early this month to withdraw troops out of northeastern Syria to clear the way for the Turkish incursion. Congress was still working on a sanctions package of its own to punish Turkey for its cross-border offensive. 

The president said the Kurdish commander in the country, Mazloum Abdi, had just told him he was "extremely thankful".

Ankara ordered a cross-border operation into Syria on October 9 because it said it wanted to create a security cordon free of Kurdish armed groups that it considers to be terrorists, linked to Kurdish rebels inside Turkey. 

The long-planned operation started after Trump announced the exit of the small, but politically significant U.S. military force which had until then been closely allied with the Kurds. 

Trump said he didn't want the U.S. troops caught in the middle of a Turkish-Kurdish war. 

Accused both by Republicans and Democrats of abandoning the Kurds, Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey on October 14 and sent a delegation to persuade Erdogan to order a brief ceasefire. 

In a tweet from a spokesman on Wednesday, Mazloum thanked Trump "for his tireless efforts that stopped the brutal Turkish attack and jihadist groups on our people." 

As U.S. troops and the Kurds exited areas near Turkey's border, Turkish troops and Russian troops, who have propped up Syrian President Bashar Assad through his country's multi-sided civil war, moved in. The first Russian patrol in northern Syria got underway on Wednesday, the defense ministry in Moscow announced. 

Russian military police and Syrian border guards are to "facilitate the removal" of Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters and their weapons from within 30km of the Turkish-Syrian border, as per the Sochi deal.