During his brief visit to Ukraine, Vladimir Putin mounted a three-wheeled Harley Davidson-Lehman Trike motorcycle decorated with Russian and Ukrainian flags and drove to the show.
The prime minister said his bike was a sophisticated piece of ironmongery and addressed the show’s participants as brothers.
“You have come here because you are free people and because you can go wherever you want. It is very symbolic that a lot of people from various European countries have gathered here. This shows that we already exist in a common space. As the Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky said we can live in a universal human community,” Putin said.
Organizers said the show included bikers from Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Serbia, the United States and Israel. Dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II and to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the show was held in the run-up to Navy Day.