A crisis constitutes a catalyst for rethinking academic responsibilities in societies facing a major threat. When a crisis escalates, such rethinking moves to the centre of both academic and social discourses, resulting in scrutiny, as well as synergy of scholarship and citizenship. Delving into the existential threats faced by Ukrainian scholars during the genocidal campaign unleashed against their country by Russia in 2022, this paper re-examines academic citizenship in times of war. The interviews analysed in this paper contribute to identifying synergies between scholarship and citizenship, and unpacking a collective agency shaped by crisis. Once peripheralized by neoliberal universities, academic citizenship is acquiring new meanings, while it reframes communal obligations and repositions professional duties in view of the life-and-death choices brought on by the war.