They were certainly influenced to unhealthy degree, but those were still national countries represented by people of their nations. I imagine Soviets just took leading Polish/Hungarian/etc communist parties and made them the government. They still were Poles/Hungarians/etc.

In 1968, Albania withdrew from Warsaw pact. And that was it.

The people of those countries were never asked who they wanted to represent them. So there were no representatives.

So you think that any non-democratic country is totally irresponsible for what happens inside?

This in the world where China and Saudi Arabia are top players.

I would not characterise the actions of undemocratic regimes as representing the "will of the country".

The fact that we accept undemocratic regimes as legal representatives of their countries for pragmatic reasons doesn't change that.

Then you should totally stop blaming Russians. Who were under undemocratic regime while a part of another entity (USSR).

I'm not blaming the Russian people. I'm blaming the USSR, that is the regime in power at the time.

I guess what went wrong in this debate - and it was my fault as well - is that for a democratic country, we can often get away with using sloppy language that conflates "country" and "people". But for undemocratic regimes, that no longer works.