Alaska Man Says “Jaw Dropped” at Putin’s Delegation Gift

Alaska Man Says “Jaw Dropped” at Putin’s Delegation Gift
  • calendar_today August 9, 2025
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — This was supposed to be a week about the U.S. president, Donald Trump, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But it may be the story of a 73-year-old retired fire inspector who is now the proud owner of a $22,000 Russian motorcycle that turned him into a viral sensation, which is somewhat perplexing to him.

Mark Warren was minding his own business Sunday and running errands on his motorcycle when a Russian television crew pulled him over for an interview in which he fielded questions about his old Ural motorcycle, a Russian-made bike that he said he has always liked but which often presented challenges getting parts and keeping on the road.

“I’ve been having trouble with mine and not being able to get parts, so the Russian TV station just asked me about that,” he said.

Warren said the interview became an Internet sensation in Russia, but didn’t think much of it. Then on Monday, he received a phone call from the journalist with the television crew. “They’ve decided to give you a bike,” he was told.

It was hard for him to process the concept: a new motorcycle. Was it a scam? Yes, it would be an unusual scam, but why assume it’s not a scam? Warren is a realist, so he hung up and didn’t think much more of it until after the Trump-Putin summiton Tuesday. The two men held a three-hour meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on the margins of the summit to discuss the war in Ukraine before flying back to Washington and Moscow, respectively.

It was on that same day — August 13 — that Warren got another phone call saying that the motorcycle was in Anchorage. The Russians had sent it from the Moscow factory to Anchorage and, as Warren put it, “basically to my front door.” The only thing he had to do was show up at a hotel the next day.

“I go, ‘Oh yeah, right,’” he said.

Warren showed up, not knowing what to expect with his wife at his side. But he found himself in the hotel parking lot with six Russians and an olive-green Ural Gear Up motorcycle with a sidecar in tow.

“I dropped my jaw,” he said. “I went, ‘You’ve got to be joking me.’”

They took his picture, he was interviewed again, and a cameraman came to film him with the motorcycle. The Ural. It was all there. He was a bit hesitant at first, thinking about how this would appear. After all, this is Russia, where political propaganda could easily be spun in the current age of information wars. The last thing he wanted was for his children or family to be in any kind of danger.

“The only reservation I had is that I might somehow be implicated in some nefarious Russian scheme,” he said. “I don’t want a bunch of haters coming after me that I got a Russian motorcycle. … I don’t want this for my family.”

But that was the only reservation: the safety of his family. The Russians asked nothing more of him and took nothing more, he said. Warren has no idea how they selected him, and even Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russians had no information about how the government got the name.

Still, he signed paperwork — the only paperwork he signed was to prove the ownership of the motorcycle transferred from the Russian Embassy to him. He was provided with a document showing the motorcycle was manufactured on Aug. 12.

“The obvious thing here is that it rolled off the showroom floor and slid into a jet within probably 24 hours,” Warren said.