After half a year of White House skepticism toward Kyiv and friendliness toward Moscow, President Donald Trump and top Republicans have shifted course, with the White House preparing to send additional weaponry to Ukraine and Congress moving to enact tough new sanctions on Russia. The change this week came as Trump’s frustration mounted over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unwillingness to engage seriously in discussions about an end to his war on Ukraine. Trump vowed last year that he would move quickly to halt the conflict but has been unsuccessful.

A senior White House official said Wednesday that the president had now agreed to some Ukrainian requests for military aid based on a detailed list that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky handed him last month when they met in The Hague.

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On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said Wednesday that they will try to pass legislation this month that would give Trump the ability to impose sanctions on buyers of Russia’s energy exports.

“We’re looking at Ukraine right now and munitions,” Trump told reporters Wednesday ahead of a White House lunch with African leaders.

The vow came a day after Trump expressed uncharacteristically tough public anger toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, declaring that the leader throws a “lot of bulls—.”

“He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting.

Trump and Putin spoke by phone Thursday. Afterward, Trump’s rhetoric toward the Russian leader sharpened significantly.

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“There’s a general frustration that it’s just not moving as quickly as possible — and that maybe pushing in one direction will help pull them to the negotiating table,” the senior White House official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about internal discussions.

At NATO, the Ukrainians “were asking for very specific things, and the president granted some of those things,” the official said, declining to offer specifics about which weapons had been approved. Zelensky has long sought additional Patriot air defense missile systems, which he says are key to defending Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure from Russian bombardment.

Since Putin’s phone call with Trump on Thursday, Russia has hit Ukraine with some of the fiercest barrages of the war, including 728 drones on Tuesday into Wednesday, a record, according to Ukraine’s air force.

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The future of U.S. military aid for Ukraine was called into question last week when, after a Pentagon review of U.S. military stockpiles and aid across the world, the Defense Department flagged some types of weapons that had been flowing into the country. Officials planned to pause some assistance because the weaponry was needed for other U.S. priorities, officials said last week.

The White House said last week that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had signed off on a decision to halt some but not all military aid.

The senior White House official said Wednesday, however, that the weapons shipments were never formally paused and that the aid continues to flow to Ukraine.

A Defense Department review of weapons shipments to Ukraine began in June, after Hegseth signed a memo following consultation with White House officials and other Pentagon officials, including Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, a senior defense official said Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

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The memo did not call for any specific outcome and did not call for a pause on munitions deliveries, the official said. It was issued to put in place a framework under which each kind of munition would receive additional scrutiny. The review is designed to meet whatever Trump’s intentions are for Ukraine aid, the official said.

“If the president wants to send things, we are poised to do that,” the senior defense official said. “If the president does not want to send things, we are poised to do that, too.”

Hegseth and Colby were on the same page when the memo was issued and remain so, the senior defense official said.

Several Pentagon officials said it was not clear Wednesday, more than a week after the pause was first reported, whether any aid was actually withheld, and for how long.

Two defense officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said it seemed possible that military leaders somewhere in the chain of command may have delayed sending some kinds of munitions until they had clarity on what senior administration officials wanted.

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In Congress, Republican leaders had previously expressed reservations about the sanctions legislation sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut). The measure would impose new sanctions on buyers of Russian energy, and some lawmakers worried that it could tie Trump’s hands and work contrary to his efforts to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the table. Thune backed the bill in April but had said that he would need to consult with the White House to coordinate bringing it up for a vote.

Now, however, both he and Johnson plan to move forward, each leader said Wednesday — leaning into Trump’s tougher attitude toward Moscow.

“Vladimir Putin has shown an unwillingness to be reasonable and to talk seriously about brokering a peace, and I think we have to send him a message,” Johnson told reporters.

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Thune said in a floor speech that lawmakers have “made substantial progress” on the proposal and that it could be ready for floor consideration as soon as this month.

The bill would seek to cut off Russia’s energy revenue by imposing 500 percent tariffs on U.S. imports from countries that buy Russian oil, gas and uranium. The Senate bill has more than 80 sponsors.

Some Republicans have expressed concern about Hegseth’s decision to pause aid to Ukraine and praised Trump for apparently reversing course.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he had not gotten answers as to why Hegseth decided to halt some aid to Ukraine.

“I am fully supportive of providing Ukraine with the resources that they need in order to resist the Russian attacks,” Rounds said. “Any suggestion on the part of officials in the United States government that we’re not going to provide them with assistance is bad news.”

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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, blasted “the strategic incoherence of underfunding our military and restricting lethal assistance to partners like Ukraine.” A pause in aid would lead to “erosion of American credibility with allies and the mounting deaths of innocents,” McConnell said in a statement.

Administration policy has zigged and zagged on Ukraine as Trump has tried to pressure both Zelensky and Putin to make concessions to end the war.

Trump officials “seem to be neither walking away, nor making the kind of policy decisions that would give them ownership of this war, and have positioned themselves closer to an arbitration role even though negotiations are going nowhere,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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U.S. military aid for Ukraine has been dwindling in recent months, as the Defense Department ships the final tranches that President Joe Biden approved before his term ended in January.

Much of the aid from the Defense Department is expected to run out later this summer, while purchases from U.S. defense contractors will probably tail off early next year. Congress would have to pass fresh legislation to fund any major new package, which could be a tough sell given the politics of Washington in the Trump era.

But Ukraine’s dependence on U.S. military aid has diminished as its needs on the battlefield have evolved over more than three years of war.

“The reality is Ukraine is far less dependent on the U.S. for day-to-day battlefield needs right now. A lot of what we’re supplying is newly produced munitions, and that production can be bought by Europeans,” Kofman said.

“We can continue supporting Ukraine with a fair amount of what they require. Europeans in some areas can substitute for us. In others, they will have to buy new production from us, assuming we are willing to sell.”