Arkadi Arkádievich Bábchenko, Russian: Аркадий Аркадьевич Бабченко; (Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, March 18, 1977) is a Russian writer, journalist, war correspondent, editor, and jurist.

He fought in the two wars in Chechnya with the Russian army, in the first serving compulsory military service, and in the second as a voluntary enlistment. All his experiences in the army and in the war were captured in several series of stories, for which he was awarded the Debut Prize in Russia. He published his stories under the title The Cruelest War (Алхан-Юрт) .1 These are crude stories that convey how an 18-year-old conscript who is sent to war feels, where he is humiliated and beaten by his own fellow veterans (practice which in Russia is known as fingervschina, in Russian Дедовщина)

He worked as a war correspondent for the newspaper Nóvaya Gazeta, for whom the assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politkóvskaya also wrote.

Babchenko criticized Vladimir Putin, in particular Russia's military intervention in Ukraine and Syria. After receiving death threats, he left Russia in 2017 and settled in Kiev, Ukraine, where he worked for the ATR television channel.
He is married and he has a daughter.