The words “puppet state” get thrown around far too often.

Countries can be aligned without one of them needing to be fully subservient to the other. Frankly, Russia probably isn’t strong enough to really have Venezuela as some sort of puppet. It isn’t the USSR in charge of the Warsaw Pact anymore. They can’t even keep Georgia fully in their orbit anymore, and it’s on their border.

edit: Now Assad in Syria, that’s an actual puppet.