They told me I am viral in Russia: Who is Mark Warren, an Alaska man who gets a personal gift from Putin?

Mark Warren , an Alaska man, received a personal gift from Russian President Vladimir Putin after Putin came to Alaska to meet President Donald Trump. It is a new Ural motorbike but Warren never met Putin. The gift follows a chain of events as preparations for the high-stakes summit were underway.

Russian media were in Alaska before the summit, and they found Warren, a retired fire inspector, with his Soviet-era bike doing his errands. They first stopped Warren seeing the bike and they admired it. Warren told them that it was becoming difficult to find spare parts for his bike and the manufacturing plant is located in Ukraine.

“So for you, if they resolve this conflict here in Alaska, I mean Putin and Trump, it will be good?” the reporter asked Warren in the report. “Yes, it will be good,” Warren replied.

Days later, Warren said he received a phone call from one of the reporters that he was viral in Russia and even caught Putin's eye. Russian officials promised him a new bike of $22,000 and Warren thought it was a scam.

But within 24 hours after the Trump-Putin meeting, officials from the Russian embassy reached out to Warren to arrange for him to meet to hand over the new motorbike. The gift handover was broadcast on Russian state media. Warren said he likes his old motorbike but the new one is much better. “I’m speechless, it’s amazing. Thank you very much," he said.

The gift of the motorbike was described by Russian media as a goodwill to Americans, though Warren said he did not think he was being used as a propaganda tool. "They're getting nothing from me," he said, adding that he's receiving backlash for accepting the gift from Putin but he's nonchalant. “I took it. I could have not taken it, and probably pi**ed off just as many people as doing that. I don’t care.”

The new motorbike was manufactured on August 12, indicating that it was procured very recently after he went viral in Russia.