The sky is not falling, but everyone is having fun. The Russian pilots get to hot dog, and NATO pilots get to punch their afterburners to intercept them. All get to play war without any of the bloody downside. And best of all, the politicians get to scare voters into giving them even more money and power while ignoring the very real problems that truly threaten their countries.
One of our family friends was an F-16 pilot in Alaska in the 1980's and he let on that several "training accidents" were not training accidents at all. Seems it wasn't uncommon for shots to be fired and for planes to be shot down. Meaning that while this current thing may look like boys being boys the fact of it is they're facing off with deadly weapons and at least one side (Russia) probably has permission to fire if they think they can get away with it.