Oleksandr Bakinovskyi is a businessman and writer who formerly served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He was born in 1977 in Chernivtsi in western Ukraine and is the father of numerous children. He holds master’s degrees in law and public administration. He is the former head of the Coordination Council for Combating and Counteracting Corruption and Protecting Public Order in Chernivtsi.

A participant in the Maidan Revolution, he volunteered for the Anti-Terrorist Operation in the Donetsk Region from the summer of 2014 to the spring of 2015 and was a member of the forces that defended Kharkiv, Bakhmut, and Sloviansk. He served as a contract soldier from 2019 to 2021 and was involved in the development of the Territorial Defense Forces, Ukraine’s reserve forces. From March 2022 to October 2023, he was in active duty in the full-scale war, participating in the liberation of the Kharkiv region, and in the battles for Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. He was appointed an advisor on veteran’s affairs to the Dnistrov District Military Administration in March 2025.

In 2025, he enrolled in playwrighting courses at the Veterans Theater in Kyiv, leading to the writing of his first play, Two Letters (2025). Based, in part, on a real-life experience, this monologue was selected for the Festival of First Plays in Kyiv and Lviv and was a longlist selection at the Contemporary Play Week competition.