Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic gave an interview to an American conservative outlet in which he claimed Donald Trump is the most popular American politician in Serbia in recent decades. According to Vucic, a full 75 percent of Serbs with a clear opinion supported Trump - "which wasn't even the case in the United States itself," as he put it.

That Vucic knows how to read an audience is no news. The interview reached Trump himself, who shared it on his network before millions of followers. For a Balkan leader, being noticed by the American president is political capital worth more than any domestic election win.

Vucic also gave the reasons for that supposed popularity: a desire for different relations with the US after the Clinton era and the NATO bombing, an appreciation of "Christian values," and Trump's attempts at peace between Russia and Ukraine. He even invited Trump to Belgrade, claiming that "at least 100,000 people would come to greet him" - after the last American president to visit was Richard Nixon.

This is worth pausing on. Numbers like "75 percent" and "100,000 people" were spoken by a politician in an interview aimed precisely at an American audience - they weren't measured, they were proclaimed. When a leader simultaneously tells Europeans they "don't understand" Trump while sending Washington compliments, that's not analysis, it's positioning.

For a Balkan reader, the picture is familiar: same face, two audiences, two messages. The question isn't whether Vucic really plays chess well (in the interview he beat the journalist), but how skilfully he plays several boards at once - and who ends up paying for the game being played over our heads.