Ah yes, the Russian master strategists who are already running into serious issues with their airframe lifetimes and lack of experienced pilots are now flying sorties with unguided munitions because they want to get shot down.

No, a plane - including wear and tear on the airframe & power plant if it doesn't get itself tactically shot down to "waste enemy AD resources" - and a pilot are absolutely not worth less than a few air defense missiles. And no, they're not using "empty" planes

a pilot is more valuable than any AA missile

Actually, it’s cheaper to use empty old aircraft to bomb places than it is to shoot down said aircraft. It’s a tactic to waste the anti air defence.

This is the best shit take I've seen here so far. Bravo @Flax_vert for providing your keyboard general opinion here, very brave.

I'm open to the general idea that maybe it's hard to put an exact price tag on aircraft in Russia's specific situation -- I mean, maybe nobody is in the market for Russian military aircraft these days or something and if Russia doesn't intend to use them for something else, maybe you could make some kind of argument that the value is much-lower than one might expect.

But in general, I think that it's generally pretty hard to argue that a manned fighter jet is a good trade for a surface-to-air-missile.