An Alaska man received a $22,000 (about Rs 19 lakh) motorcycle from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s team last week after a viral TV interview. Mark Warren, a retired fire inspector for the Municipality of Anchorage, was presented with a brand-new olive-green Ural Gear Up motorcycle with a sidecar. It was manufactured days earlier on August 12, and flown into Alaska ahead of the US-Russia summit.
Mr Warren, already the owner of an older Ural motorcycle, was first noticed by a Russian television crew while running errands. During a brief interview, he spoke about the challenges of finding spare parts for his Soviet-era-inspired bike. “It went viral, it went crazy, and I have no idea why, because I’m really just a super-duper normal guy. They just interviewed some old guy on a Ural and for some reason they think it’s cool,” Mr Warren said, as per CNN.
Two days before the August 15 summit, a journalist called Mr Warren to tell him he would receive a motorcycle. Sceptical at first, he assumed it was a prank.
After the summit, the team directed him to an Anchorage hotel parking lot, where six men he assumed were Russian delegates stood beside the bike. “I dropped my jaw. I went, ‘You’ve got to be joking me,'” he recalled.
While signing the paperwork to officially claim the bike, Mr Warren noticed its recent manufacturing date. “The obvious thing here is that it rolled off the showroom floor and slid into a jet within probably 24 hours,” he remarked.
Andrei Ledenev, an employee of the Russian Embassy in the United States, handed Mr Warren the keys. “I have to say that this is a personal gift from the President of the Russian Federation,” Mr Ledenev said.
Mr Warren immediately hopped on the bike for a test ride, with Mr Ledenev behind him and another man in the sidecar. “It’s night and day,” he said. “I like my old one, but this one is much better. I’m speechless, it’s amazing. Thank you very much,” he added, as per Reuters.
The Russian team only requested photos and a short interview. “If they want something from me, they’re gonna be sorely disappointed,” Mr Warren 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.”