Alaska man gifted $22,000 motorcycle by Russian government after viral
interview
[August 20, 2025]
By MARK THIESSEN
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska man might have walked away as the
biggest winner of last week’s high stakes summit between U.S. President
Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage. He rode
off with a new motorcycle, courtesy of the Russian government.
Putin's delegation gifted Mark Warren, a retired fire inspector for the
Municipality of Anchorage, a Ural Gear Up motorcycle with a sidecar, one
week after a television crew's interview with Warren went viral in
Russia. The motorcycle company, founded in 1941 in western Siberia, now
assembles its bikes in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, and distributes them
through a team based in Woodinville, Washington.
Warren already owned one Ural motorcycle, purchased from a neighbor. He
was out running errands on it a week before the summit when a Russian
television crew saw him and asked for an interview.
Warren told the crew about his difficulty obtaining parts for the bike
because of supply-and-demand issues.
“It went viral, it went crazy, and I have no idea why, because I’m
really just a super-duper normal guy,” Warren said Tuesday. “They just
interviewed some old guy on a Ural, and for some reason they think it’s
cool.”
On Aug. 13, two days before the Trump-Putin summit to discuss the war in
Ukraine, Warren received a call from the Russian journalist, who told
him, “They’ve decided to give you a bike.”
Warren said a document he received indicated the gift was arranged
through the Russian Embassy in the U.S., which did not immediately
return a message Tuesday.
Warren said he initially thought it might be a scam. But after Putin and
Trump departed Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson following their
three-hour summit last Friday, he got another call informing him the
bike was at the base.
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Alaska resident Mark Warren rides the a new Ural motorcycle he
received as a gift from the Russian government in Anchorage, Alaska,
Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, after Russian President Vladimir Putin's
visit to the state for a summit meeting with U.S. President Trump.
(Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News via AP)
He was directed to go to an Anchorage hotel the next day for the
handoff. He went with his wife, and there in the parking lot, along
with six men he assumed to be Russians, was the olive-green
motorcycle, valued at $22,000.
“I dropped my jaw,” he said. "I went, ’You’ve got to be joking me.’”
All the Russians asked in return was to take his picture and
interview him, he said: “If they want something from me, they’re
gonna be sorely disappointed.”
Two reporters and someone from the consulate jumped on the bike with
him, and he drove slowly around the parking lot while a cameraman
ran alongside and filmed it.
The only reservation he had about taking the Ural is that he might
somehow be implicated in some nefarious Russian scheme. Warren said
he doesn’t want a “bunch of haters coming after me that I got a
Russian motorcycle. … I don’t want this for my family.”
When he was signing the paperwork taking ownership of the motorcycle
from the Russian embassy, he noticed it was manufactured Aug. 12.
“The obvious thing here is that it rolled off the showroom floor and
slid into a jet within probably 24 hours,” he said.
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