New York Times:
MOSCOW — The Kremlin’s chief spokesman has confirmed that a report broadcast on Russian television this week revealed the design of a secret nuclear weapon delivery system: a drone submarine that could attack coastlines.
Russian officials said the revelation of the submarine, which has not yet been produced, was accidental. But it came to light in the Russian news media in a way that suggested that the Kremlin wanted the West to know.
Such a submarine design had been conceived decades ago, independent Russian military commentators said, but it had not been revealed until now. It would function as a long-range torpedo and would avoid missile defenses by traveling under the ocean’s surface.
News of the design was reported on state and NTV television on Monday as though merely in passing, during a meeting between President Vladimir V. Putin and military industry officials and generals. The broadcast began with a public portion.
At one point, the camera zoomed in on something one of the military officers was reading: a binder opened to a page showing the weapon design.
“Maritime Multifunctional System Status-6,” a headline said, in block Cyrillic letters, above an illustration showing the submarine and a text in easily decipherable large letters explaining the weapon’s effects.
The submarine would “defeat important economic objects of an enemy in coastal zones, bringing guaranteed and unacceptable losses on the country’s territory by forming a wide area of radioactive contamination incompatible with conducting military, economic or any other activities there for a long period of time,” it said.
On Wednesday, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told Russian news agencies that the cameras had accidentally filmed a secret document…
