Anchorage, Alaska
AP
—
An Alaska man may need walked away as the largest winner of final week’s excessive stakes summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage. He rode off with a brand new motorcycle, courtesy of the Russian authorities.
Putin’s delegation gifted Mark Warren, a retired fireplace inspector for the Municipality of Anchorage, a Ural Gear Up motorcycle with a sidecar, one week after a tv crew’s interview with Warren went viral in Russia. The motorcycle firm, based in 1941 in western Siberia, now assembles its bikes in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, and distributes them by a workforce based mostly in Woodinville, Washington.
Warren already owned one Ural motorcycle, bought from a neighbor. He was out operating errands on it every week earlier than the summit when a Russian tv crew noticed him and requested for an interview.
Warren advised the crew about his issue acquiring components for the bike due to supply-and-demand points.
“It went viral, it went crazy, and I have no idea why, because I’m really just a super-duper normal guy,” Warren mentioned Tuesday. “They just interviewed some old guy on a Ural, and for some reason they think it’s cool.”
On Aug. 13, two days earlier than the Trump-Putin summit to focus on the conflict in Ukraine, Warren obtained a name from the Russian journalist, who advised him, “They’ve decided to give you a bike.”
Warren mentioned a doc he obtained indicated the reward was organized by the Russian Embassy within the US, which didn’t instantly return a message Tuesday.
Warren mentioned he initially thought it is likely to be a rip-off. But after Putin and Trump departed Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson following their three-hour summit final Friday, he received one other name informing him the bike was on the base.
He was directed to go to an Anchorage resort the subsequent day for the handoff. He went along with his spouse, and there within the parking zone, together with six males he assumed to be Russians, was the olive-green motorcycle, valued at $22,000.
“I dropped my jaw,” he mentioned. “I went, ’You’ve got to be joking me.’”
All the Russians requested in return was to take his image and interview him, he mentioned: “If they want something from me, they’re gonna be sorely disappointed.”
Two reporters and somebody from the consulate jumped on the bike with him, and he drove slowly across the parking zone whereas a cameraman ran alongside and filmed it.
The solely reservation he had about taking the Ural is that he would possibly someway be implicated in some nefarious Russian scheme. Warren mentioned he doesn’t need 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 possession of the motorcycle from the Russian embassy, he observed 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 mentioned.