[3] He was a recipient of the Oles Ulianenko International Literary Award and laureate of the Les Martovych [uk] Competition.

He officially started working in 1990, first as a kitchen worker, then acquired various specialties from being a trucker to an apartment repairman (20 years of experience on various bases).

In 2005-2006, he was the deputy head of the Kremianets literary association in Izium, where he was the editor-in-chief of the Krynytsia children's and teenagers' newspaper.

On March 22, 2022, Vakulenko and his autistic 13-year-old son Vitaliy were arrested by Russian occupiers in Kapytolivka, a Ukrainian village near the town of Izium.

[7] Vakulenko believed that his pro-Ukrainian views would make him a target of the occupying Russian forces and his house was filled with Ukrainian-language books, including copies of his own, that he figures would be enough to arouse suspicion.

[7] When exhumed a week after the liberation, his corpse was initially misidentified despite cemetery documentation that correctly gave his surname but he was later formally identified using a DNA sample.

[7] Following his death and the liberation of Kharkiv, his journal of the war, which he had buried in his backyard, was retrieved by writer Victoria Amelina and published.

[2][7] In 2023 the killers of Vakulenko were supposedly identified as the soldiers Vladyslav Neskorodiev (commander) and S. Udodenko (executor) serving in the armed forces of the illegitimate Luhansk People's Republic.