There is zero chance he's kissing the ring. And I agree thinking he would convert Trump would be naive, but I don't think that was it either.

Generally speaking, the last person the orange fascist speaks with gets his attention for X amount of time. He was either doing that about something very specific, or possibly it was more of an intelligence operation, finding out what the fascist's next step around a specific issue is.

Anyway that's based on knowing Alexander fairly well. But, it could also be the other European leaders said to him "hey man, we did our trip to that asshole, now it's your turn!" (the last guess is from my wife, who knows him a bit better/longer than me).