I don't know if you know this, but the world seems to get stranger and stranger by the day. Whether it's 1,000-year storms happening every year—wonder why?—or everyone's fascination with artificial intelligence—it's basically just fancy-pants predictive text that hallucinates and is error-prone—but the world is a weird place to be.
I personally blame the rise of the internet, which, yes, is where you're reading this now, but we'd be better off had we just not brought it to life. Because every day I open this god-forsaken hellhole of a browser tab, I find myself with headline after headline that makes me go, "What kind of world are we living in?!" Again, strange for someone so perpetually online as me, but this headline that I wrote above has to take the cake.
Yes, you read it right, Russian dictator or so-called President Vladimir Putin was recently at a summit between him and the current President of the United States, Donald Trump. And at the summit, which took place in Alaska, he gave a local a new Ural motorcycle and sidecar because it was a photo op masquerading as being "a nice guy."
The internet is too easy a place for people to post things...
The story, which was first reported on by Reuters, says that the man who was gifted a new Ural was a local Anchorage man, Mark Warren. The handover between Warren and Putin took place in the parking lot of the hotel where the Russian delegation for the summit was taking place, and according to the outlet, happened because Russian state reporters saw Warren and his Ural "by chance on the streets of Anchorage ahead of the summit."
For what it's worth, I have a Master's degree in Intelligence Studies, specializing in weapons of mass destruction. I did a lot of work and research on Russia, its armaments, and its politics. You don't just happen to meet Vladimir Putin's allies or even the Russian state press on the street. This is a dude so paranoid of getting assassinated that he builds fortresses in the mountains that look like they're out of James Bond. Do you know how many FSB agents were likely around him? Plus our own Secret Service?
Hell, I wouldn't want to be on Putin's bad side anywhere near a hotel...
Reuters states, "The reporters stopped to admire Warren's bike, which is manufactured by Ural, whose original factory was founded in 1941 in what was then Soviet Russia. Warren told a reporter, Valentin Bogdanov, that he struggled to obtain spare parts for the bike, including a new starter, because the manufacturing plant is 'located in Ukraine.'"
But guess where Ural isn't located? Ukraine.
So right now, Ural has its headquarters in Washington state, where our very own Janaki Jitchuvisut recently got her hands on the brand's new Neo 500 platform. However, the classic sidecar everyone knows and loves, the Gear Up, began to be built in Kazakhstan in 2022, just after the current hostilities between Russia and Ukraine kicked off, and was due to import/export sanctions being placed on Russian goods since they started the whole thing. Before that, however, the motorcycles were built in Irbit, Russia.
That said, the Kazakhstani manufacturing plant was building bikes and parts for the Gear Up, so whatever this dude is high on, he's just talking nonsense.
This whole thing is a photo op, one that reeks of desperation on the side of the Russians in an attempt to sway public opinion. "Oh woe is me, this poor local Alaskan can't get spare parts for his Soviet-era motorcycle because those mean old Ukrainians won't cede their land to Russian aggression! Poor me! I won't even think to ask the company, which manufactures spare parts elsewhere for the things I need!"
Give me a break.
