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On Friday Putin said Russia had been “working for a long time” on the new weapons.
“We know other countries tried to (manufacture the weapons) but presumably they did not succeed,” he told local media in the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic.
Peskov denied suggestions that one of the videos allegedly used a map of the United States to simulate an attack on Florida.
“No maps were used there, these are absolutely symbolic contours, there is not any tie-up to any concrete country,” he said.
– ‘Declaration of new Cold War’ –
Analysts said Putin — who is all but guaranteed to win a fourth Kremlin term in March 18 elections — was effectively challenging Washington to a new arms race.
“This is a formal declaration of a new Cold War,” independent security analyst Alexander Golts told AFP.
He compared Putin’s address to former British prime minister Winston Churchill’s 1946 speech in which he condemned the Soviet Union and effectively announced the beginning of the Cold War.
The US State Department expressed outrage at Putin’s presentation and his “cheesy” animated video of warheads over US soil — and said the Russian leader had confirmed long-held allegations about his programme.
“We don’t regard that as the behaviour of a responsible international player,” spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
“President Putin has confirmed what the United States government has known for a long time but that Russia has denied prior to this.”
Underscoring the tension, Russia called off strategic talks with the US set for this month after a Washington delegation snubbed a meeting on cybersecurity, Moscow’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, told Russia’s state TASS news agency Friday.
