“It’s your own fault” is one of the most common propaganda tactics both in the internal (Russian) and external information spaces. Propagandists transfer the responsibility for what has been done to the victim, causing them to feel ashamed or guilty, etc. For example, the authorities are bad, but the officials who violate the laws are not to blame for this, but the voters who voted for them. Like, you have what you have voted for.

Since the beginning of a full-scale war, Russian propaganda has been convincing that it is Ukraine that is to blame for the duration of the war. Like, if the Ukrainians had not resisted, the so-called “special military operation” would have already “achieved its goals” and ended. The propagandists also tried to transfer part of the blame to the West. They say that the supply of air defense systems and weapons to Ukraine only “increases the number of victims and prolongs the conflict”. These messages propagandists spread to the internal audience. They say that Ukrainians “asked for it” with their resistance.

Using such tactics, Russian propaganda shifts responsibility for Russian massive missile strikes to the Ukrainian army. They say that if Russian “high-precision” missiles had not been shot down with the help of Ukrainian “ridiculous” air defense systems, they would have hit “only military targets”, and civilians “would not have suffered”. In particular, propagandist Olha Skabieieva voiced this on the air of a Russian TV channel: allegedly, the Ukrainian military fires dozens of missiles from air defense systems that randomly move in the sky, do not hit Russian missiles, but collide with each other and fragments of these missiles fall into civilian buildings while Russian rockets reach their goals. So, Skabieieva explained the consequences of rocket attacks on Kyiv. Similar explanations were given about the reasons for the X-22 missile hitting a multi-storied building in Dnipro: the Russian missile allegedly flew clearly at a military target, and it was “unsuccessfully” shot down over the building.

The propagandists also spread messages that, thanks to Poroshenko, Ukraine had lost Crimea and part of the East, and thanks to Zelenskyi, the loss of territories was even greater. They say that it was not Russia that began to occupy Ukrainian territories in 2014, but the “it’s own fault” of Ukrainians who supported the Revolution of dignity (in the language of propagandists - “coup d'état”), elected Petro Poroshenko, and later Volodymyr Zelenskyi as presidents. 

“It’s your own fault” tactics is used in combination with the “substitution of concepts” technique.