Russia and Ukraine have “agreed” not to strike each other’s energy infrastructure, President Donald Trump asserted Monday — perhaps aiming to accelerate a deal that reportedly remains under negotiation and which Moscow has previously resisted.

While Kyiv quickly expressed readiness for an energy truce, the Kremlin has remained conspicuously silent.

It’s not hard to guess why.

Vladimir Putin knows that Ukraine, short on air defenses, is staring down the barrel of its hardest winter yet — and he wants to exploit that vulnerability.

But there’s a way to blunt the Russian bombardment, and improve diplomacy’s chances in the process.

Ukraine, unable to intercept enough Russian “arrows,” should be permitted to use the Starlink satellite internet service to take out the “archers” inside Russia.

Despite Trump’s efforts to revive peace talks by dispatching envoys to Moscow and Kyiv earlier this month, Putin appears determined to continue fighting.

On the front lines, Ukraine is in its strongest position since 2023. Ukrainian forces are stymieing Russia’s advances and pursuing reforms under a new, forward-thinking general, Mykhailo Drapatyi.

In the air, however, Russia is conducting relentless drone and missile strikes, aimed mainly at undermining defense-industrial production and throttling Ukrainian exports.

As the weather cools, Russia will likely return to focusing on attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

To be sure, Ukraine is punching back harder than ever, successfully striking oil refineries and other targets deep inside Russia.

Yet Putin evidently calculates that Russia can inflict “much more painful and much more destructive” blows than Ukraine can, as he boasted last month.

One problem for Ukraine is Russia’s ramped-up production of jet-powered attack drones and low-cost cruise missiles.

These munitions fly too fast for Ukraine’s existing interceptor drones, so they’re stretching its stocks of the expensive air defense missiles needed to counter them.

The bigger concern, though, is Russian ballistic missiles.

Kyiv is desperately low on critical PAC-3 interceptors for the Patriot air defense system, and Western countries have few to spare.

Efforts to expand PAC-3 production and develop lower-cost alternatives are underway, but they’ll take years, not months, to produce results.

Russia, meanwhile, has surged missile production since the war began.

It’s currently making over 100 Iskander and RM-48U ballistic missiles per month — and is reportedly asking for additional ballistic missiles from North Korea on top of the roughly 190 Pyongyang has already provided.

To protect its power plants and population centers, Ukraine needs to destroy Russia’s ballistic-missile launchers, which can quickly reposition after firing.

It’s seen little success in this effort so far, but Elon Musk’s company SpaceX could help change that.

The Ukrainian military has relied on SpaceX’s Starlink system since early in the war to help deploy unmanned systems inside Ukraine’s borders and on the Black Sea.

With its resilience to jamming, low latency and compact, inexpensive antenna terminals, Starlink has given Ukraine an asymmetric advantage for drone reconnaissance and strikes beyond the radio-signal horizon caused by the Earth’s curvature.

This year, Ukraine has successfully used Starlink-controlled mid-range drones to destroy dynamic targets like logistics trucks on occupied Ukrainian soil.

Kyiv now wants to do the same against the ballistic-missile launchers and related assets threatening its people.

SpaceX, however, restricts access to Starlink on Russian territory, where launchers are typically placed — despite Ukraine’s direct appeals.

Musk reportedly sees these potential Starlink-facilitated strikes as escalation, and is urging Ukraine instead to pursue a peace deal.

But that logic is backward.

A negotiated settlement will remain elusive so long as Putin insists on non-starter demands that outstrip his military leverage.

The autocrat still believes he’ll eventually impose his will on Ukraine, in part by freezing civilians in their homes.

He’s wrong about that, as Washington has tried — unsuccessfully — to convey.

Getting Putin to moderate his terms requires convincing him he has no path to victory.

In the meantime, degrading Russia’s ballistic-missile capabilities could give Moscow more reason to accept a mutual moratorium on striking energy infrastructure.

In fact, the United States is already supplying Ukraine with intelligence that supports deep strikes on fixed targets like oil refineries in order to undermine Russia’s war effort and incentivize negotiations.

While these strikes might be an “escalation,” as Trump has rightly observed, they’re “an escalation that could help lead to an end” to the bloodshed.

With Starlink, Ukraine isn’t even asking for help striking Russian energy infrastructure —  just in hitting military equipment that threatens civilians.

It seems clear, though, that Trump’s personal intervention is necessary.

With a phone call to his friend Elon, the president can save lives — and further the cause of peace.

John Hardie is deputy director of the Russia program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where US Navy Rear Adm. (ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow.