I am trying to fill in some details in fedja's answer:
We shall need the following preliminary result:
Lemma 1: Let $\lambda \in \mathbb{S}^1$. Then, the distance of $\lambda$ from $1$ is not greater than twice its distance to the set of non-negative reals.
Proof:
Denote $\lambda = a+ib$. Note that $|\lambda-1|= \sqrt{2-2a}$.
We separate into two cases:
$(1)$: $a \ge 0.$
Since $a \ge 0$, it is clear that $d(\lambda,x_{\ge 0})=|b|$, so
$$2d(\lambda,x_{\ge 0}) \ge |\lambda-1| \iff 2|b| \ge \sqrt{2-2a} \iff 4b^2 \ge 2-2a \iff $$
$$ 2-2a^2=2b^2 \ge 1- a \iff a+1-2a^2 \ge 0$$
This holds since the L.H.S equals $a(1-a)+(1-a^2)$ which is a sum of two non-negative numbers. (Remember $0\le a \le 1$).
$(2)$: $a < 0.$ In that case $d(\lambda,x_{\ge 0})=1$, so the inequality becomes $2 \ge |\lambda-1|$ which is trivial (The diameter of the unit circle is $2$).
Back to the main proposition:
We want to prove $$(1) \, \, |AB-O_{AB}| \ge c|AB-O_AO_B|$$ for some $1>c>0$. Let $A=O_AP_A,B=O_BP_B$ be the polar decompositions of $A,B$. Then $$AB=O_AO_B(O_B^TP_AO_B)P_B=O_AO_BXY,$$ where we Denote $$X=O_B^TP_AO_B,Y=P_B \, \text{ (both are symmetric positive definite) }$$
Then $(1)$ becomes:$$ |O_AO_BXY-O_{AB}| \ge c|O_AO_BXY-O_AO_B|=c|XY-I|$$
(The last equality holds whether we use the Frobenius norm, or the operator norm, since both are invariant under multiplication by orthogonal matrices).
Denoting $U_{A,B}=(O_AO_B)^{-1}O_{AB}$, and using again the orthogonal invariance of the norm we get that $(1)$ is equivalent to $$ |XY-U_{A,B}| \ge c|XY-I|$$
Note that $XY$ similar to $X^{1/2}YX^{1/2}$, so all its eigenvalues are real positive.
Thus, it suffices to prove the following:
Lemma 2:
Let $U \in \operatorname{O}_n$,$A \in M_n$ with positive eigenvalues, and let $\delta >0$. There exists a constant $C>0$ (independent of $U,A,\delta$) such that if $|A-U|_{op} \le \delta$, then $|U-I|_{op} \le C\delta$. (In fact one can choose $C=5n$).
Why lemma 2 implies our required result?
Taking $\delta=|A-U|_{op}$ we get: $$|A-I|_{op} \le |A-U|_{op}+|U-I|_{op} \le (C+1)|A-U|_{op}$$. Putting $A=XY,U=U_{A,B}$ this becomes:
$$ |XY-I|_{op} \le (C+1)|XY-U_{A,B}|_{op}$$
Q.E.D
Attempted proof of the lemma 2:
Assume by contradiction that $|U-I|_{op} > C\delta$.
Since $U-I$ is normal $|U-I|_{op} = \max{|\lambda_i-1|}$ (where the $\lambda_i$ are the eigenvalues of $U$). So, there exists an eigenvalue $\lambda$ of $U$, such that $|\lambda-1|>C\delta$.
Since $\lambda \in \mathbb{S}^1$ lemma (1) implies that the distance of $\lambda$ from the semi-positive $x$ axis is greater than $\frac{1}{2}C\delta$.