[anikan_vader]

Satellite state is the usual term.

It's not clear that the term colony implies direct governance. For example, the Brits applied almost no direct governance to their colonies in the Americas from 1650-1750.

One could also just say that the Russians occupied Eastern Europe for the half-century following World War 2.

[mr_toad]

I think that the American colonies were more like the Latin colinia, deriving from the Latin for cultivate. It implies a large population movement, and exploitation, not just a conquest.

It was more like the Saxon colonisation of the UK, which replaced the native Celtic population, rather than the Norman conquest, (or the colonisation of India) which just replaced the oligarchy.

What came quite a lot later in America , was the attempt to assert more direct Imperial rule over the colonies.