Soviet officer who ‘saved the world’ dies at 77

MOSCOW — Stanislav Petrov, a former Soviet military officer known in the West as “the man who saved the world” for his role in averting a nuclear war over a false missile warning at the height of the Cold War, has died at 77.

Petrov’s German friend, Karl Schumacher, said Tuesday that he died on May 19. The Russian state Zvezda TV station reported the death on Tuesday.

Petrov was at the early warning facility outside Moscow on Sept. 26, 1983, when an alarm went off, signaling the launch of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles. The 44-year-old lieutenant colonel chose to consider it a false alarm, which it was.

In a 2015 interview with The Associated Press, Petrov recalled the excruciating moments at the secret Serpukhov-15 control center.

“I realized that I had to make some kind of decision, and I was only 50/50,” Petrov told the AP.

If he had judged it a real launch, the Kremlin would have likely ordered a retaliatory strike.

Petrov told his commander the system was giving false information. He was driven by the fact that Soviet ground radar could not confirm a launch.