If I look or go outside, I’ll notice the blizzard, and adapt accordingly (get a scarf, umbrella…). If there’s a blizzard but I don’t even look outside to notice it, that means I don’t have to adapt to it, and thus not even be informed of its existence.
Well, just personally speaking, I know Russian, and reading Russian news sources (state-owned as well as those that have been banned by the Russian state) from time to time, and talking with Russians directly, hasn’t even remotely convinced me that the “Russian empire” is equally bad as the “western empire”.