I don’t know where you ever got that idea from. They are bigger than ever, at least on paper. Admittedly they have lost a significant part of their most trained and motivated pre-war core by now, but a lot are still around and formally they have only gotten bigger because the Kiev regime keeps sending the best recruits and best equipment to Azov and the various other Nazi units (some of which, like Kraken, are made up of pure psychopaths…), because these units have the political connections to the Right Sector and the other Banderite political groupings that are really in charge of Ukraine.

So anything that goes to the Ukrainian military eventually ends up in their hands if it’s any good. And they’ve become more and more legitimized and more integral to the Ukrainian army as their ideology has been normalized in the ranks of the professional military and widely adopted by a large segment of the population. Also, a whole bunch of them got captured at Azovstal in Mariupol but were exchanged over time and most of them immediately went back to fighting. Really dumb move. The Russians know who these people are and won’t be taking them prisoner a second time.

But despite their reputation they’re really kind of shitty fighters. Like the IOF they’re good at terrorizing civilians, not so good at fighting wars. Mostly they fulfil the role of blocking detachments to keep the unwillingly mobilized in line and shoot anyone who tries to run or surrender. Which is ironic because there have been a bunch of instances when they themselves outright ran instead of following orders when they were sent in as a last resort, noticed the situation was FUBAR, and they just fucked off and left the poorly trained conscripts to die just to delay the Russians for a bit.