Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire who has irked the mainstream news media for taking a pragmatic stance on Ukraine, may have prevented WWIII by cutting off Kyiv from accessing his Starlink internet over Crimea—and preventing a major escalation.

The revelation was made in Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography of the billionaire. 

The New York Times, citing two unnamed sources, said Musk denied Kyiv’s request to allow Starlink to be used for a drone attack near Crimea, which Ukraine has identified as its top goal in the war. The deactivation reportedly resulted in the maritime drones losing connectivity and washing ashore near Sevastopol, which is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Musk reportedly made the decision to avoid the chance of WWIII. Russia has said it will go nuclear if any of its territory is threatened, and the billionaire had just met with Russian leaders for private conversations. 

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president who is now deputy head of the country’s security council, posted on Musk-owned X that the Tesla head is “the last adequate mind in North America.”

“Or, at the very least, in gender-neutral America, he is the one with the balls,” Medvedev added.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also posted on X to condemn Musk and said civilians and children are being killed because of Musk’s decision.

“This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego. However, the question still remains: why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?” he posted.

Isaacson also posted on X to clarify that the Ukrainians “THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub-attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that it would cause a major war.”

Musk posted on X: “The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything. There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Csaba Korosi, the UN General Assembly president, told reporters last week that the world is closer to a global catastrophe than any time and the threat of nuclear escalation could just add to the seriousness of the situation.

“We are closer than any other time in this century to global catastrophe,” he said. “And yet we fail to see the terrifying trap that we have set for humanity by betting on nuclear weapons.”

TRENDPOST: Zelensky has said clearly, and has been publicly encouraged by the U.S. to try his hand to retake Crimea. (See “RUSSIA STRIKES UKRAINE PORT AFTER KYIV LAUNCHES DEADLY ATTACK ON CRIMEA BRIDGE” 25 Jun 2023, “U.S., BRITAIN ‘FULLY DRAGGED’ INTO UKRAINE WAR IF THEIR EQUIPMENT IS USED TO STRIKE CRIMEA,” 27 Jun 2023, “UKRAINIAN WAR ESCALATES: KYIV PLANS TO TAKE OVER CRIMEA. BLOWS UP RUSSIAN OIL DEPOT” 2 May 2023, and “RAMPING UP WAR, UKRAINIAN ATTACKS RUSSIAN BASE IN CRIMEA” 4 Apr 2023.)

Musk has been called a “geopolitical chaos agent” by The New York Times last year because he laid out a peace plan for Ukraine. The paper noted that it is not uncommon for billionaires to use social media to offer their opinions about certain topics, but Musk is different and none “can come close to Mr. Musk’s influence and ability to cause trouble.” (See “ELON MUSK CALLED A ‘GEOPOLITICAL CHAOS AGENT’ FOR REFUSING TO SWALLOW THE CORPORATE MEDIA BULLSHIT,” 1 Nov 2022.)

Musk echoed what The Trends Journal has been saying since the beginning of the war: that Ukraine will likely end up with the same outcome, it is just a matter of how many people have to die before an agreement is reached. He also said in 2022 that “a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war.”