‘Astronomically random’: Putin gifts motorcycle to Alaska man, but he has no idea why

BIRD CREEK, Alaska (KTUU/Gray News) – An Alaskan man was given a motorcycle last week, labeled as an “act of giving” by Russian President Vladimir Putin – but he has no idea why he was chosen.

According to Bird Creek resident Mark Warren, he was gifted a Ural motorcycle last week following an interaction with two Russian state media journalists the week before the summit in Alaska with Putin and President Donald Trump.

“I thought it was a hoax because they don’t know me. I don’t know them,” Warren said.

According to Warren, he was riding his own Ural motorcycle in downtown Anchorage on Aug. 6. During his ride, he said, he was approached by a group of Russian media journalists who began asking him questions about his motorcycle while filming him.

“There were two gentlemen at an intersection that stopped me, and they identified themselves as Russian journalists, and they were interested in why I had the bike,” Warren said. “It was purely just information about the bike, why I bought it, and about what I did to fix it up.”

Ural Motorcycles are named after the Ural Mountains that run north to south through Western Russia. The sidecar motorcycles initially originated from Irbit, Russia, following the establishment of the original factory in 1941. Since August 2022, the bikes have been assembled in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan.

Several days after the initial interaction, Warren told KTUU he had received a call from one of the journalists who informed him the blog post about him had gone viral.

A few days after that conversation, Warren said he received another call stating that he was being gifted a brand-new Ural motorcycle from Putin.

“I just felt, this is so random and so strange, that I felt apprehensive about this being actually really going to happen ... this doesn’t just happen. I know no one from the Russian Embassy,” Warren said.

A document provided by Warren from the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the U.S. stated, in part:

“The Embassy of the Russian Federation in the United States of America on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir V. Putin, transfers as an act of giving the following property: Motorcycle ‘Gear-Up,’....”

The letter did not say why the gift was presented to Warren.

KTUU reached out to the embassy to learn why the motorcycle was gifted but has yet to hear back.

“There is no reason why they could have … should give me a bike. I haven’t done anything for them or to them, and I don’t know anybody,” Warren said. “So yeah, it’s so absolutely astronomically random that it was hard for me to understand why this happens. Matter of fact, I still don’t know why.”

Warren said that he did not have any second thoughts about accepting the gift, but did say he had hesitation about rejecting it.