Seems to be possible unless you live in Germany, just follow this guide [0]. If in a EU country, I wonder if you could also submit a data subject access request (I'm not too familiar on GDPR).
I don't know.
I live in Germany and the files are also stored in /sdcard/WhatsApp/
And also the message databases are under there, ready to be copied and decrypted.
You can also access the unencrypted messagestore database, if you have root access.
For me, it is located at : /data/data/com.whatsapp/databases/msgstore.db