How does empathy have anything to do with this discussion? We were talking about how it can be more difficult to ignore the war and focus on something else in Europe, because you may feel the consequences in your daily life. Giving the news only 15 minutes of your time every day is not a very effective strategy, if you keep encountering the thing you are trying to avoid outside news.

If there is a war anywhere, it effects everyone, globally.

I don't get why this is such a hard concept for people to understand.

There is always a war somewhere, but it doesn't affect everyone equally. For the average Finnish citizen, this is probably the first time since WW2 that a war is raging in the "real world" instead of just in the news. For the average American citizen, it doesn't look like the war has spilled from the news to the real world yet. Polish and Russian citizens see a bigger impact than Finnish citizens, and the impact on the average Ukrainian citizen is obviously far greater.