MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin's spokesman says plans for a new submarine-launched nuclear torpedo shown on Kremlin-controlled television were secret and should never have been aired.

The video broadcast on NTV and Channel One — shot over a military officer's shoulder during a meeting with Putin — showed a document describing a weapons system called Status-6, which it said would cause radioactive contamination to make coastal areas unsuitable for military or economic activity "for a long time."

The channels later removed the footage.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said late Wednesday: "It's true that some secret information was caught by the camera and therefore it was subsequently removed. We hope this will not happen again."

The appearance of the video on Kremlin-controlled channels raised suspicions it was done intentionally to alarm the West.