Two Russian television channels have unintentionally aired footage containing confidential information on military weapon systems, Russian officials said. The pictures allegedly showed plans for a nuclear torpedo.
The televised images show a military officer looking at a confidential document during a meeting of President Putin with army top brass in Sochi.
“It’s true some secret data got into the shot, therefore it was subsequently deleted,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Wednesday.
Two Kremlin-controlled channels, NTV and Channel One, broadcast the video on Tuesday before discovering the mistake. Although the original footage was deleted, several websites still published screenshots from it.
The document, clearly visible for several seconds, showed drawings and information on a nuclear torpedo, allegedly being developed by Rubin, a nuclear submarine construction company from St. Petersburg.
The Status-6 torpedoes would target “economically important enemy facilities in coastal regions” by creating “zones of extensive radioactive contamination making them unsuitable for military or economic activity for a long period,” the document says.
Missiles to beat the shield
It was not immediately clear how the pictures got on air in what are usually carefully controlled reports.
“In future we will undoubtedly take preventive measures so this does not happen again,” Peskov said.
On Tuesday, Putin warned that Russia would focus on developing new types of nuclear missiles capable of piercing anti-missile shields.
dj/kms (AFP, Interfax, dpa, AP)
