vassal

"It's not in Europe's interest, and it's not in America's interest, for Europe to be a permanent security vassal of the United States," Vance said.

"His task is to seize all of Ukraine, change its legal status, and change the president and government. He wants to destroy our political system and to make Ukraine his vassal state."

According to the polling expert, Mr Lee, "a growing portion of the public now believes China wants to turn South Korea into some kind of vassal state".

But Liik, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the Russian leader, in seeking to make Ukraine a “vassal state,” could overreach.

He also characterized the antebellum North as “the mere cringing vassal of the South” and a section of the country that contained “lords” and “nobles” of its own that comprised an “aristocracy of the skin.”