The UK is still trying to cobble together

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Putin, you have a problem: “Bloodied protesters, a hunger strike, police raids, more than a thousand arrests, a mysterious ‘illness’ afflicting the Kremlin’s most prominent critic — a long-simmering dispute over a local Moscow election boiled over this weekend into a major political crisis for Russian President Vladimir Putin,” writes Marc Bennetts for POLITICO.

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STRAIT OF HORMUZ CONUNDRUM: It’s not all about Brexit in the relationship between the West’s component parts — but it sure doesn’t make things easier.

a naval mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and to find a way to get back the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero, which phone number library was seized by Iran on July 19. A British diplomat told POLITICO there was a good handover between former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who had called for a “European” mission, and his successor Dominic Raab. But what does “European” mean?

Not an EU-led institutional mission, as the EU’s External Action Service said last week and confirmed Monday to Playbook. (It’s not going to be NATO mission either.) But a meeting of EU ambassadors on the political and security committee (PSC) was used last week to discuss the latest in the Gulf.

Not a US-led mission — Britain is too European (and too concerned with getting that ship back) to risk mixing up the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s busiest oil strait, with the Iran nuclear deal, aka the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. But American support would be very much appreciated. Said Raab Saturday: “I think we do want to see a European-led approach, but that doesn’t seem to me to be viable without American support as well.”