Yuriy Vasilevich Shatunov (; September 6, 1973 – June 23, 2022) was a Russian singer, best known as being the frontman of the Russian 1980's band Laskoviy Mai (Ласковый май). Name 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, Vera Shatunova's surname at a young age due to the lack of a relationship with his father, Vasiliy Klimenko. Personal life Shatunov was born on 6 September 1973 in the city of Kumertau, Bashkir ASSR, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the former Soviet Union. His father Vasiliy Vladimirovich Klimenko was half Russian and half Ukrainian. 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. He went to live with his aunt and maternal grandparents, who soon found themselves unable to cope with his behavior. Shatunov was sent to Orenburg Children's Home Number 2 in Orenburg, where he had a reputation for poor behavior. This included running away from the orphanage, playing guitar, singing on the streets to get money and cigarettes, getting into fights, and avoiding work. He met with Sergei Kuznetsov, a music teacher in the orphanage, and they created a band, "Laskoviy Mai" ("Tender May"). In this group they frequently sang about unfortunate love, which was not typical at that time, and was especially unusual for the young band members who were only in their early teens. This group, in which Shatunov was the frontman, existed from 1986 to 1992, and was very popular in Russia. In 1996, Shatunov moved to Germany, where he went to complete his education, which was unfinished due to his turbulent youth and early career in music, and to learn how to become a music producer. Shatunov had a wife and two children, a son and a daughter. Shatunov and his wife got married in 2007 in Germany after seven years of dating. Before Shatunov died, he was busy working on his solo career, and performed frequently in Russia, Germany and in Eastern European countries, as well as some of the former Soviet bloc countries in Central Asia such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Yuri Shatunov died on the night of 23 June 2022 of acute