EU crime agency sends teams to help refugees

Europol, the European Union police agency, has sent teams to countries bordering Ukraine in an effort to protect refugees from criminals.

The Hague-based agency said on Friday its teams are supporting local authorities by running secondary security checks and seeking to "identify criminals and terrorists trying to enter the EU in the refugee flow and exploit the situation." The Europol teams are operating in Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Moldova and are planning to deploy to Romania, too.

The agency says they also are gathering intelligence to feed into criminal threat assessments across Europe.

The United Nations says that more than 4 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24.