This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

In the months following the invasion of Ukraine,

this one piece of graffiti started popping up on walls and cities across Russia.

Eight asterisks written out all in a row.

Eight asterisks instead of phrase no war.

In the Russian is eight letters. Alexandra Arjibova is a. war.

The Russian is eight letters. Alexandra Arjibova is a Russian anthropologist.

She's been documenting different forms of protest happening inside Russia.

Today, Russians can face years in prison if they're caught speaking out against the war.

In Russia you cannot say war it's forbidden it's absolutely forbidden.

And so people are using symbols like the asterisk instead.

It's coded language which people are trying to hide their messages in some innocent form to pretend that they are saying some innocent things but in reality

they are not.

And those innocent looking codes are evolving fast. Take, for example, the image of a fish that

started to appear across Russia. That's reporter Sophie Codner. Back in September,

a woman in Russia wrote out the Russian word for no in chalk in the street.

But then, instead of writing out the Russian word for war, Woyne, she wrote just the first and last

letters of the Russian word, with asterix in between.

Russian authorities had caught on to the asterix thing by this point, so the woman was detained

by police and tried in court.

At the hearing, she told the judge that the

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