Russia and China were not at the just-concluded NATO summit, but they were mentioned often. Here are 5 takeaways from the meeting.

MADRID — NATO came together in a rare wartime meeting this week and showed a united front on arming and supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, naming China as an economic and diplomatic threat — that is also rapidly building up its military — and trying to make the alliance better able to respond to any Russian incursions.

And let’s not forget Turkey’s last-second agreement to approve allowing Finland and Sweden into the alliance.

All of that and more was packed into about 48 hours of closed-door meetings, news conferences, sideline chats, dinners and pledges to remain united against Russia both militarily and economically, as gas and agricultural prices continue to rise. 

NATO is clearly and definitively not ignoring the threat presented by an unpredictable and brutally violent Russia. The alliance’s new Strategic Concept paper — a guide for alliance strategy updated for the first time in over a decade — warns it “cannot discount the possibility of an attack against Allies’ sovereignty and territorial integrity” by the Kremlin, and Eastern European and Baltic alliance members were clear: They are worried.

That view was echoed by leaders from big powers like the U.S. and U.K. to small nations like Estonia, all of which genuinely appear to be on the same page about Russia. During the summit, Ukraine was held up as a frontier separating the West from Russian aggression. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Thursday that if Russia wins in Ukraine, “Putin will be in a position to commit further acts of aggression against other parts of the former Soviet Union more or less with impunity.”

One NATO military official told reporters on the sidelines of the summit that before the invasion, “what we underestimated was Russia’s intent” in Ukraine, and that’s not a mistake they plan to make again.