That’s a big if. My bet is that they are in Central or Northern Europe, just like the Pirate Bay people. Unlikely anyone in Russia or China would care to offer a service primarily to the benefit of the western world. I bet there are similar sites in the Runet or behind the Great Firewall we don't even know about and that simply don't bother catering to us.

Yep. You can also see that in the design language and the written English on their sites and blog posts. Something created by people with a Russian or Chinese background would approach a myriad of little things differently.

> Unlikely anyone in Russia or China would care to offer a service primarily to the benefit of the western world.

Russians are huge on the piracy scene and have been for decades, primarily because it’s an effective way for the Russian Federation to thumb their nose at the Americans. China has more than a billion people in it. I’m sure between the two of them there is at least one person that identifies with citizen of the world style liberalism (and, if I could venture to be an optimist, probably a lot more than one).

Z-library was/is very likely run by Russians. They were even arrested by FBI, but escaped. Archive.is is likely run by a Russian. LibGen was run by Russians.

What are you on about? rutracker, libgen, sci-hub, z-lib are all Russian/ex-Soviet projects and cater heavily to westerners. I'm 99% sure archive.is and anna's-archive are also in this category.