Going along the Black Sea's northern coast towards the European southeast, Russia's direct political influence is shaking and weakening, but the way of rule we now call Putinization is not. Ironically, the most widely quoted example of Putinization in this region is Hungary, which is an EU and NATO member state. The situation was similar to that in Ukraine, in that the West wanted desperately to draw it closer to the Euro-Atlantic alliances. It should be seen as a worrying test of the EU and NATO accession criteria and values that were applied to those countries. If the Ukrainian Yanukovych had succeeded in ridding himself of Russian control, he would have been welcomed into the Western “democratic club” in spite of a full awareness of his repressive and corrupt government. It is similar with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, who is systematically undermining the rule of law and dismantling democratic institutions. If it is not worse, then nothing has changed in terms of democratic regression in Hungary, according to the findings of Christopher Walker and Sylvana Habdank–Kolaczkowska for the 2012 Nations in Transit report. They studied authoritarian regimes in the region and stressed that “much more worrisome is the Putinization of countries that had joined the ranks of established democracies, a trend that demands a fresh look at the growing challenges to democratic consolidation.”