In an act of public diplomacy ahead of a high-profile summit in Anchorage, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented a motorcycle with a sidecar to an Alaska resident.

Delivered by a Russian embassy official, the unusual “gift” by the Russian head of state to a random US citizen captured global attention for two reasons. 

One, it highlighted Moscow’s attempt to improve the public image of President Putin, whose goodwill among Americans tanked especially after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. 

And two, the unusual gift brought Ural, a unique motorcycle brand with deep Soviet roots, under the global spotlight.

Days ahead of the high-stakes meeting between Putin and US President Donald Trump, Russian state TV reporters ran into Anchorage resident Mark Warren on the streets of the Alaskan city.

Warren was riding a Soviet-era Ural motorcycle that had become difficult to maintain due to US sanctions affecting the availability of spare parts.

During a conversation with a Russian reporter, Warren expressed frustration about sourcing components, mistakenly noting that the manufacturing plant was “located in Ukraine”.

The reporter asked Warren if a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict during the summit would benefit him. Warren said yes, unaware that his casual conversation would soon lead to an extraordinary gift from Putin himself.

Days later, a Russian embassy official handed Warren the keys to a new Ural motorcycle in the parking lot of the Anchorage hotel hosting the Russian delegation.

“This is a personal gift from the president of the Russian Federation,” the Russian state media quoted the embassy official as saying.

Warren, described by the Reuters news agency as white-haired and bespectacled, was taken aback. “It’s night and day,” Warren said. “I like my old one, but this one is obviously much better,” he said. 

“I'm speechless, it’s amazing. Thank you very much.” 

The Soviet legacy of Ural

A Soviet-era icon with a sidecar, the Ural motorcycle traces its origins to World War II. As the Soviet Union witnessed the devastating impact of Germany’s bombing of Poland, the need for a rugged vehicle capable of navigating Russia’s rough terrain and battlefields became paramount.

In the late 1930s, the Soviet People’s Commissariat of Defence convened to design a motorcycle for the Red Army. Five units of the BMW R71, identified as a close match to the army’s needs, was covertly purchased through Sweden.

Soviet engineers at the newly established Moscow Motorcycle Plant, repurposed from a bicycle factory, reverse-engineered the BMW model. Thus began the production of the M-72, a military sidecar motorcycle, in August 1941.

But the invasion of the Soviet Union by the German Nazi forces in the same year prompted the relocation of the motorcycle plant to Irbit – a trade hub located on the fringes of Siberia in the Ural Mountains, a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north-south mostly through Russia and was considered well beyond the reach of German bombers.

Housed in a former brewery, the Irbit Motorcycle Factory – named IMZ – began operations, dispatching its first batch of M-72 motorcycles to the front in February 1942. 

It churned out nearly 10,000 units during the war, primarily for reconnaissance in tank and mechanised brigades.

IMZ expanded significantly through the 1950s, as the factory focused on producing military motorcycles. By the end of the 1950s, however, military production shifted to a sister plant called KMZ in the Ukrainian city of Kiev. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union at the time.

Meanwhile, the original plant of IMZ shifted to civilian production, becoming a sprawling Soviet-style factory employing nearly 10,000 workers and producing up to 130,000 motorcycles annually at its peak.

A cost-effective alternative to cars, Ural motorcycles with sidecars dominated the domestic market. In 1953, IMZ began exporting to countries that were part of Warsaw Pact, a collective defence treaty established by the Soviet Union and seven of its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought challenges to the iconic motorcycle maker. 

In 1992, IMZ transitioned to private ownership, with the Russian government retaining only 22 percent shareholding.

As trade barriers came down and the economy liberalised, the company found it hard to sustain motorcycle sales. Russians favoured used Western cars over sidecar motorcycles, leading to a production drop to just under 2,000 units a year towards the end of the 1990s.

A Russian-Georgian businessman, Kakha Bendukidze, bought IMZ for some time but struggled to revive its sales.

By October 2000, financial difficulties halted production altogether. Bendukidze sold the factory to new owners, which immediately restructured IMZ. 

They slashed the workforce by two-thirds, selling assets and focusing on export markets, particularly sidecar-equipped motorcycles.

Production resumed in 2001 and, by 2002, the company centralised its distribution network via Irbit Motorworks of America in the US and Ural Motorcycles GmbH in Austria, Europe.

Ural motorcycles are now sold globally through over 190 dealerships, with the US as the primary market, followed by Japan, Canada, the UK, Australia, the EU, and China.

In 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war disrupted Ural’s operations due to sanctions on Moscow, halting both imports of parts and exports of motorcycles.

IMZ-Ural called for a ceasefire in a statement and relocated its assembly line to Petropavl, Kazakhstan, a city in the former Soviet state with a Russian-speaking population.

The company restarted production at the new factory in August 2022 and, since then, all new Ural motorcycles have been produced in Kazakhstan using parts sourced from around the world.