- calendar_today August 9, 2025
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — At this week’s supercharged U.S.-Russia summit in Anchorage, Alaska, the grinning winner may have been neither President Donald Trump nor Vladimir Putin.
Instead, it could be a retired fire inspector from Anchorage who now has a new motorcycle to ride courtesy of the Russian government.
Mark Warren, who said he has been a fire inspector for the Municipality of Anchorage for 28 years, could not believe what happened after he was interviewed by a Russian TV crew on a recent errand run on his Ural motorcycle. That short interview, which Putin’s team arranged, went viral in Russia and prompted the Russian government to give Warren a new $22,000 Ural Gear Up motorcycle with a sidecar, the color olive green.
Warren’s gift “is in Anchorage,” he said on Tuesday in an interview, and it is “ready for me to pick up tomorrow.”
“The Russian consulate called me yesterday,” he said. I’m going to this hotel tomorrow. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Warren already had one Ural, a used bike that he bought from a neighbor. But it’s not easy to maintain in Alaska. He said he has a difficult time finding spare parts.
“There’s more demand for parts for them than what’s available,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to get parts.”
On Tuesday, he said, “I’m stoked beyond words.”
Warren, 58, a resident of the rural Bear Valley, Alaska, a little south of Anchorage, first became acquainted with the Urals when he used to deliver gasoline to the Ural factory in Anchorage from the distributor in California. Warren delivered a total of 19,000 gallons of gasoline to the Ural plant in Anchorage, he said, adding that the plant has since been closed.
Warren is not a famous person in the world of motorcycle enthusiasts, nor is he known for being a biker or a motorcycle racer, or for giving Ural rides to kids. He simply had a conversation with a Russian TV crew, and the next thing he knew, the Russian government sent him a $22,000 motorcycle.
“I had a good conversation with them, and that’s all it was,” Warren said of his meeting with the Russians who delivered his gift. “I don’t have any real history with them.”
The Ural Motorcycle Company was established in 1941 in the Uralsk region of western Siberia, which is how the Ural motorcycle earned its name. After the Soviet Union was dissolved in the early 1990s, the production of Ural motorcycles in the original plant in the Uralsk region was discontinued. The factory closed, and the assembly of Ural motorcycles was moved to the city of Petropavlovsk in Kazakhstan.
Ural motorcycles are now available in the United States through a three-member Ural America team with an office in Woodinville, Washington, where a warehouse of Ural motorcycles and accessories is kept.
Ural motorcycles have a unique look: the company says its bikes “combine the rugged looks of a World War II era motorcycle with the comfort of modern technology.”
“Because of its vintage looks and rugged good looks,” Warren said. “They look like a motorcycle, but they’re a little bit more than that.”
The olive green bike is newly made, Warren said, and bears the production date of Aug. 12 on its title page, with delivery of the motorcycle taking place in Alaska less than a day later.
“They rolled this off the showroom floor and shoved it in a jet, probably within 24 hours,” Warren said.
Warren said he was surprised when the same Russian journalist with whom he spoke on Aug. 13, the day of the Trump-Putin meeting, called him with a message from the Russian government: “They’ve decided to give you a bike.”
Warren then thought it was a joke. “I thought, ‘Oh yeah, right,’ and I hung up the phone and threw it at the wall,” Warren said.
Warren had not heard from the Russians until Aug. 15, after the summit in Anchorage was over. The three-hour meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to talk about the war in Ukraine did not yield any dramatic results but did end with Trump and Putin both flying out of Alaska.
The next day, Warren was called with the news that the motorcycle was now in Anchorage and ready for delivery.
The Russian team gave Warren no instructions except to meet them at the hotel the following day. Warren and his wife showed up, not knowing what to expect.
“I pulled up in the parking lot, and there were six guys, I guess from Russia, and my new Ural Gear Up was parked in the parking lot for me,” Warren said.
“I said, ‘You’ve got to be f—— kidding me,’ because it’s a real nice motorcycle,” Warren said, lowering his voice. “They’re just stoked to get it.”
Warren said he was asked only to provide a few photographs, to talk with the Russian media once again, and to let them video him riding the new bike in the hotel parking lot.
The Russians, he said, were “good enough to allow us to video me driving it around the parking lot.”
“They let us do the video. They let us take some pictures, and that’s all they wanted,” he said. “It’s been an incredible blessing.”
For his part, Warren said, he was “cautious to receive it” from Russia, saying, “We’re at war with Russia. That’s how it looked at me, like ‘They’re from Russia.’”
“After I received it, I said, ‘Wow, thank God they didn’t have any conditions on it, other than to take some video of me and ride around in the parking lot,’” Warren said.
Two reporters and a third person from the Russian consulate rode along in the sidecar as Warren circled the lot slowly. “The cameraman was jogging next to me,” Warren said.
