Yes but in 1994 people were already speculating that NATO expanding into the no-mans-land would be seen by Russia as aggression, as Jack Matlock says in this video I posted recently which was a conversation that happened on the day of the Budapest Memorandum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHm_7T7QNl8

Because NATO is not an economic union, but a miliary one. And while military unions are defensive in nature, enemy nations can't be sure of that (it's called the security dilemma). And NATO weaponry went into these countries, which even Kissinger (who was pro NATO expansion) argued we shouldn't do.