Putin’s delegation gifted Mark Warren, a retired fire inspector for the Municipality of Anchorage, a Ural Gear Up motorcycle with a sidecar, one week after a television crew’s interview with Warren went viral in Russia.

“The symbolism of Alaska would be a reminder of how it was possible for the United States and Russia for most of the 19th century to transcend their ideological and political differences and their expansionisms, to have warm, friendly cooperative relations,” says David S. Foglesong, a history professor at Rutgers University - New Brunswick.