Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office has said that police carried out searches at the residence of an employee of the European parliament and at his office in the parliament’s building in Brussels over possible Russian interference.

Prosecutors said in statement that the suspect’s office in Strasbourg, where the EU parliament’s headquarters are located in France, was also searched, AP reported.

“The searches are part of a case of interference, passive corruption and membership of a criminal organisation and relates to indications of Russian interference, whereby members of the European parliament were approached and paid to promote Russian propaganda via the Voice of Europe news website,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said they believe the employee played “a significant role in this.”

Good morning and welcome to our blog covering the Russia-Ukraine conflict. We start with news that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is set to arrive in the Moldovan capital Chisinau on Wednesday.

It the first stop of a brief Europe tour during which he will aim to solidify the western support for Ukraine across Nato allies and neighbouring countries.

The US top diplomat’s trip comes as Ukraine is trying to fend off intensifying Russian attacks in the east and as President Vladimir Putin warns that allowing Kyiv use western weapons to hit inside Russia would trigger a global conflict.

On Tuesday, the French president Emmanuel Macron said that Ukraine should be allowed to use its allies’ weapons to “neutralise” Russian military bases used to fire missiles into Ukraine. But he added: “We should not allow them to touch other targets in Russia, and obviously civilian capacities.”

Macron commented during a state visit to Germany, whose chancellor, Olaf Scholz, appeared to back Ukraine on the matter as well – saying he agreed with the French president as long as the Ukrainians respected the conditions of the weapons’ suppliers.

Earlier in the day the Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, had said the country should not rule out sending troops to Ukraine.

In other news:

• Polish security services have arrested a man suspected of trying to get photos of military vehicles crossing the border into Ukraine, a spokesperson said on Wednesday, the latest in a string of spy cases. The 26-year-old Ukrainian man was suspected of encouraging a Polish citizen to share the photos and “take part in the activities of foreign intelligence against the Republic of Poland,” the spokesperson said.

• Sweden’s energy and defence minister has announced 13.3bn krona (£1bn) in military support for Ukraine.

• Newly-appointed Russian defence minister, Andrei Belousov, has sent telegrams to Moscow’s forces in Ukraine thanking them for their battlefield progress, official army news outlet Zvezda reported on Wednesday. Putin in May removed ally Sergei Shoigu as defence minister and replaced him with Belousov, an economist and former deputy prime minister, in a surprise move.

• The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told the Economist that alliance members should let Ukraine strike deep into Russia with western weapons. But the White House on Tuesday ruled out such a possibility for US-supplied weapons. “There’s no change to our policy at this point. We don’t encourage or enable the use of US-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia,” said John Kirby, national security council spokesperson.

• Vladimir Putin warned of “serious consequences” if Russia is struck with western weapons – repeating a pattern of routine but vague and unfulfilled threats towards Ukraine’s allies. The Kremlin also gloated over persisting differences in the west – “we see that there is no consensus on this issue”, regime spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Russian daily Izvestia.