Yuriy "Yura" Vasilevich Shatunov, commonly anglicized as Yuri, Russian:Юрий "Юра" Васильевич Шатунов, is a Russian singer, best known as being the former frontman of the Russian 1980s band Laskoviy Mai (Ласковый май). He was born on 6 September 1973 in the city of Kumertau, Bashkir ASSR, in the former Soviet Union.
Commonly spelled "Yuri Shatunov" in English, his official website, Shatunov.com, lists his name as "Yuriy" (which is the most precise transliteration of Russian), "Yury," and "Yuri." The English pronunciation of all three is identical. Yuri took his mother's, Vera Shatunova, surname at a young age due to the lack of a relationship with his father, Vasiliy Klimenko.
Shatunov was born on 6 September 1973 in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the former (USSR), in the autonomous Republic of Bashkortostan. At the age of three he was abandoned by his father and was raised by his mother. When he was eleven his mother died of heart disease, and he lived with his aunt and maternal grandparents, who soon found themselves unable to cope with his behavior.