Russian Delegation Surprises Anchorage Man With Sidecar Motorcycle

Russian Delegation Surprises Anchorage Man With Sidecar Motorcycle
  • calendar_today August 9, 2025
  • News

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — They came to Anchorage to shake the hands of the world. And, inadvertently, to gift an old man a new motorcycle.

The gathering last week of President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin for a summit in Anchorage has had many winners. But it’s possible that the biggest was an Alaska man who rode home from a downtown hotel parking lot on a $22,000 motorcycle courtesy of the Russians.

Mark Warren, who retired as a fire inspector with the Municipality of Anchorage, never thought of himself as a newsworthy person. But that’s how the Russians saw him after they stopped him as he was running errands on his Ural, shot a video interview, and published it online. It went viral in Russia.

Two days later, on the eve of the Trump-Putin summit over Ukraine, Warren was notified the Russians would be sending him a new motorcycle — and, by the end of the summit, it had been delivered.

The prize is a Ural Gear Up with a sidecar. The olive-green color is called Colorado Olive, and it was manufactured on Aug. 12. The bike and sidecar were flown in from Russia and Kazakhstan.

Ural originally was based in a city of the same name in western Siberia, but after the Soviet collapse began selling motorcycles in the U.S., and from 2013 to 2018 was based in San Diego. It now assembles the bikes in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, and U.S. distribution is through a Woodinville, Washington-based team.

Warren already has a Ural, a secondhand one he bought from a neighbor. He’s had a tough time finding parts to keep the bike running. “They’re still tough to find, because the demand outpaces the supply,” he said. He was honest with the Russian reporter when she stopped and asked about riding a Ural in Alaska.

“It went viral, it went crazy, and I have no idea why, because I’m just a super-duper normal guy,” Warren said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “They just interviewed some old guy on a Ural, and for some reason they think it’s cool.”

It went beyond his wildest expectations. On Aug. 13, Warren got a call from the Russian journalist he had talked with.

“They’ve decided to give you a bike,” the journalist said.

Warren didn’t believe it. For free, and from the Russians? No. But after Trump and Putin met at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson for three hours on Aug. 16 before the Russian president flew back to Moscow, Warren got another call.

It was official, the Russian told him. The bike was in Anchorage. All Warren had to do was show up at a downtown hotel the next day.

“I said, ‘Well, okay,’” Warren said. “My wife went with me. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Warren found six men, all of whom he assumed were Russians, in the hotel parking lot waiting for him, along with an olive-green Ural Gear Up. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He said he dropped his jaw.

“You’ve got to be joking me,” he told them.

Warren said all the Russians wanted in return for the bike was for him to submit to a photograph, answer a few more questions, and let them shoot a video of him posing with the motorcycle. He obliged.

Two reporters and someone from the Russian consulate piled into the bike’s sidecar, and Warren circled the parking lot with the cameraman running alongside to capture it all.

Warren was apprehensive at first. He didn’t like the idea of a foreign government sending him a gift. “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 because I got a Russian motorcycle. … I don’t want this for my family.”

He said the only document he signed was to claim the motorcycle and remove it from the custody of the Russian Embassy in Washington. In so doing, Warren now owns the Ural Gear Up that was shipped into Anchorage.

The paper trail showed the motorcycle had just been manufactured the day before, Warren learned. He said the paperwork shows the date of manufacture was 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.

For now, Warren is glad for the gift. The Ural Gear Up with sidecar is valued at $22,000. But he’s still uneasy being caught up in the Trump-Putin world.

“Welcome to the Russia-China-USA rat race,” Warren said.