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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Tucked among the fireworks of a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage last week was a smaller story. The winner may have been the hometown guy who left with a shiny new motorcycle given to him by Russia’s delegation.

Mark Warren is a retired fire inspector for the Municipality of Anchorage who had been going about his day on his motorcycle, running errands when a Russian TV news crew pulled up to stop him.

A video of that interview with the grizzled man on his Ural went viral in Russia.

The resulting gift from Russia’s government: a $22,000, olive-green Ural Gear Up motorcycle with sidecar, which, Warren says, rolled off the showroom floor on August 12.

Warren already had one Ural. He bought it used from a neighbor. “I love this bike but it’s kind of been tough keeping it running,” Warren said he told the Russian reporter when he was first interviewed, as Ural parts are hard to come by, with demand for the machines outstripping supply.

“The Russians get kind of antsy, if the parts are not available. They want them to be available.”

Little did Warren know at the time that the Russian TV reporter was going to touch off a flurry of activity that would involve Ural USA (the company that distributes Ural bikes to the United States and is based in Woodinville, Washington), the Russian government, the U.S. State Department and Trump and Putin.

“You’re on the front page of every newspaper in Russia,” Warren said in an interview Tuesday. “It went viral, it went crazy, and I have no idea why, because I’m really just a super-duper normal guy.”

The Russians “just interviewed some old guy on a Ural, and for some reason they think it’s cool.”

Warren went on to describe what happened next, as the world’s attention converged on Alaska for the Trump-Putin summit that was held on August 15 to discuss the war in Ukraine. The two leaders met for about three hours at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson before departing from Alaska. “I didn’t think anything of it until the 13th when the Russian journalist called and said, ‘Hey, they’ve decided to give you a bike.’ I’m, like, what are you talking about?” Warren recalled, shaking his head.

“I just thought it was some kind of scam.”

The Bike Gift Was No Scam

The two leaders had departed Alaska by then and Warren was told the bike was in Anchorage. “Go to the hotel tomorrow at this time,” he said, the reporter told him.

The next day, Warren and his wife met the Russians at the hotel. Warren said he saw six Russians (he assumed, he wasn’t sure) and the new Ural Gear Up was sitting there in the parking lot.

“I dropped my jaw,” Warren said. “I went, ‘You’ve got to be joking me.’”

The Russians, he said, only wanted to take his photo, interview him and film a video of him on the new Ural. Warren obliged. “Two reporters, someone from the Russian consulate got on the back of the bike, and we circled around the parking lot and the cameraman was running along with me,” Warren said.

“I was concerned because we were getting a gift from a foreign government, a Russian foreign government,” he added. “I thought at least I would need to clear this with the U.S. government, the State Department. I really didn’t want any part of any kind of deal.”

The only reservation I had is that I might somehow be implicated in some nefarious Russian scheme and here I was taking this free gift and I don’t want a bunch of haters coming after me that I got a Russian motorcycle.

Warren told the AP that’s all he signed. “I just signed to take possession of it from the Russian Embassy,” Warren said. “That’s it. Nothing political.”

Warren said the only paperwork that he signed was when he took delivery of the motorcycle from the Russian Embassy. A “bill of sale” obtained by the AP, verified as legitimate by Warren and his wife, showed that the motorcycle in fact was manufactured on August 12.

“The obvious thing here is that it rolled off the showroom floor and slid into a jet within probably 24 hours,” Warren said.