You can only do what you can do; as in the old Phantasm movie, “I can’t use him in pieces”.
You may not be able to take those people on directly—but even incidental help can be critical. Perhaps you can find other places they can go; perhaps you can just provide directions. Don’t underestimate the power of information and networking in cases like this.
And thank you for thinking about it, and making it important :)
It matters because semantics matter. The media in general has been quite shrill about “world war III”, using it to acquire eyeballs and ad revenue. While it IMO doesn’t quite rise to being blatantly false, it’s still misinformation, or at least information distortion.