Russia confirmed Wednesday the authenticity of a blueprint for Status-6, a secret nuclear weapon that was accidentally leaked during a news report on state-controlled TV.
"It's true that some secret information was caught by the camera and therefore it was subsequently removed," Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said,
according to The Associated Press. "We hope this will not happen again."
The blueprint was shown Monday on NTV during a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and military officials. During the broadcast, the camera zoomed on a binder opened to the page with the weapon design.
Many observers said it looked like a deliberate leak — more saber-rattling from an increasingly aggressive Russia.
"I have a feeling it was shown in order to scare the world," said Alexander Golts, an independent Moscow-based military analyst. "It's an attempt to offer an asymmetrical answer to the U.S. missile defense."
"We are aware of the video footage, but defer to the Russian navy as to its authenticity," a Pentagon spokesperson
told the BBC.
The weapon, a nuclear torpedo the would be launched from a submarine, appeared to be an modern version of a design first offered by Andrei Sakharov, "the father of Soviet thermonuclear bomb who later came to defy the Soviet system and won a Nobel Peace Prize," according to the AP.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst, summed up Russia's weapons update thus: "The plan is to deliver a 100-megaton nuclear bomb to the U.S. shores. It would cause a highly radioactive tsunami."
This week, Putin has held four consecutive days of meetings on defense issues, and at has described NATO's U.S.-led missile defense program an attempt to break nuclear parity. He warned that if this was the case, Russia would deploy new strike weapons capable of piercing the shield.