09:57 10.02.2015(updated 16:12 10.02.2015)
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The channel was reporting about the talks between President Obama and Chancellor Merkel.
The two leaders have been considering the possibility of supplying lethal weapons to the Ukrainian government.
The channel’s captions team headlined it as “Obama considers arming pro-US troops”, implying that Ukraine's soldiers, currently embroiled in a civil conflict with breakaway regions in the east of the country, were in fact pursuing US foreign policy.
The text was kept on for several minutes before and during CNN's Carol Costello interview with Lt. Col. James Reese on Monday morning.
This has long been the assertion of many Russian onlookers who see the current government in Kiev as the product of a Washington-engineered coup.
CNN’s blunder was immediately spotted by viewers – and went viral on Twitter; it was hailed as a “Freudian slip” and one commented, "the mask slips.”