Maria and her husband, Aleksandr, are certain that President Vladimir V. Putin will secure a fifth term as Russia’s leader in the presidential election this weekend.

But the couple, who live in Moscow with their three children, are not so sure about what will follow. Foremost in their minds are fears that Putin, emboldened by winning a new six-year term, might declare another mobilisation for soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Aleksandr, 38, who left Russia shortly after Putin announced the first mobilisation in September 2022 but recently returned, is even considering leaving the country again, his wife said.

“I only hear about mobilisation — that there is a planned offensive for the summer and that troops need rotation,” Maria, 34, said in a WhatsApp exchange. She declined to allow the couple’s family name to be used, fearing repercussions from the government.

Many Russians have been worrying about a multitude of issues before the vote, which started on Friday and takes place over three days. Though the Russian authorities have denied that another mobilisation for the war is planned, a sense of unease persists.

The concerns appear to be grounded in the possibility that Putin will use his unfettered power to make changes he avoided before the vote. Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, one of the few independent pollsters in Russia, said those anxieties were still felt mainly by the minority of Russians who oppose the government.

While potential mobilisation remains the biggest cause of concern, there is unease, too, over finances and the economy. Some Russians worry that the ruble, which has been propped up by the government after plunging last year, might be allowed to depreciate again, raising the cost of imports. Businesspeople worry about higher taxes, and opposition activists expect more crackdowns on dissent.

“People are very anxious,” said Nina L. Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York City who regularly visits Russia. “Uncertainty is the worst, as much as Russian people are used to uncertainty.”

The worries reflect a current mood in Russia, where many have learned to hope for the best but expect the worst. The uncertainty has been worsened by a government that experts say has become increasingly authoritarian.

After more than two decades in power, Putin is not restrained by an Opposition party in Parliament or a strong civil society. He is therefore relatively free to act as he pleases.

Some experts say that the Kremlin could use the results of the vote — expected to be a landslide victory for Putin — to crack down even further on dissent and escalate the war in Ukraine, which was intended to be a brisk “special military operation” but has turned into a slog that has caused hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Elections in Russia are managed tightly by the Kremlin through its almost total control of the media and state enterprises, whose workers are often pressured to vote. The electoral machine filters out unwanted candidates, and Opposition activists have either been forced to flee or have ended up in Russian prisons. The country’s most prominent dissident, Aleksei A. Navalny, died last month in a penal colony in the Arctic where he had been imprisoned.

While the outcome of the vote is not in question, Russians have still been preoccupied by the process. The vote will be the first since Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.

A Moscow consultant who works with Russian businesses said some of his clients had deliberately scheduled new stock offerings on the Moscow exchange so that they would happen in what they expected to be a relatively quiet period before the vote. He requested anonymity to avoid jeopardising his relationship with his clients.

Russian consumers also rushed to buy cars at the beginning of the year, after auto-market analysts suggested that the period before the elections might be the best time to buy because the ruble might be devalued once the vote was over. The number of new cars sold in Russia in January and February jumped more than 80 per cent compared with the same period last year, according to Avtostat, a news website about the Russian auto industry.

Businesses have been worried that the government will raise taxes after the vote. On Wednesday, Putin said that the government would draft new tax rules for individuals and private entities, and experts said that most likely meant taxes would rise for both groups.

Yevgeny Nadorshin, the chief economist at the PF Capital consulting company in Moscow, said companies were particularly concerned about a rise in taxes and higher labour costs. “That would jeopardize Russia’s competitiveness,” he said.

Nadorshin also noted the widespread rumours of another troop mobilisation that, if it occurred, could further restrict the labour market for businesses, he said.

Volkov, of the Levada Center, said that most Russians, after the initial shock of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the mobilisation that followed seven months later, adapted to the new world. Much of that was the result of government efforts to raise morale by making sure the country’s economy stayed healthy and injecting money into its industrial sector.