RUSSIAN tyrant Vladimir Putin gave an Alaskan local a brand new £16,000 motorbike while visiting the US for his high-stakes summit with Donald Trump.
Mark Warren, 66, was given the bike after footage of him complaining he couldn’t fix his Soviet-era motorcycle went viral on Russian media.
The retired fire inspector, who lives in Anchorage, where the US and Russian leaders met last Friday, rode off with a brand new Ural Gear Up sidecar.
Ural, a manufacturing firm originally established in 1941 in Western Siberia during Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, is now based in Kazakhstan.
Warren complained he was unable to obtain the correct parts to fix the motorcycle because of supply-and-demand issues and sanctions on Russia.
State-sponsored Russian media spotted Warren running errands on the bike one week before the Trump and Putin summit.
He said: “It went viral, it went crazy, and I have no idea why, because Im really just a super-duper normal guy.
“They just interviewed some old guy on a Ural, and for some reason they think its cool.”
On August 13, two days before the Trump-Putin summit to discuss the war in Ukraine, Warren received a call from a Russian journalist.
They told him: “They’ve decided to give you a bike.”
Warren said he was also sent a document noting the gift was arranged through the Russian Embassy in the States.
An Alaska resident initially suspected a scam when contacted, but after Trump and Putin left Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson following their three-hour summit, he received another call regarding the motorcycle.
Warren was told his new £16,000 bike was at the same base the world leaders had met at.
He was instructed to go to an Anchorage hotel for the handoff.
After arriving alongside his wife, he met six Russian men who presented him with the mind-boggling gift.
“I dropped my jaw,” he said.
“I went, ‘You’ve got to be joking me’.”
He said the men only asked to interview and picture him.
Two reporters and someone from the group got on the bike with him while he drove around the car park to show it off.
The lucky punter had reservations about the Ural being a malicious Russian scam.
But he accepted the gift, which according to its paperwork was manufactured on August 12.
He said: “The obvious thing here is that it rolled off the showroom floor and slid into a jet within probably 24 hours.”
And he told the Daily Mail: “I’m dumbfounded. I guess I should probably write Putin a thank you letter or something.
“I haven’t. I’ve been so busy it hasn’t really sunk in yet.”
He added: “It’s super cool, you know? I mean, it’s just such a unique bike.”
It comes as Putin continues to wage his bloody war on Ukraine.
The despot unleashed a fresh breakthrough assault just hours before his summit with Trump.
And just hours after Trump’s summit with European allies, Russia blitzed Ukraine over Monday night with 270 drones and missiles.
The brutal attacks targeted energy and transport infrastructure.
On the eve of a meeting between Zelensky and his European counterparts with Trump on Monday, a brutal attack in Ukraine resulted in 14 fatalities and left dozens injured.
