One of them is professional bridge player Lyudmila, known as Mila, Antonova. What is known about her is outlined in an RTVI report.
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On February 24, Gates apologized to employees of his charitable foundation for his ties to Epstein. He stressed that he “did nothing illegal” and that his mistresses were not victims of the financier. Gates added that he never spent the night at Epstein’s residence, never visited his island, and did not spend time with women “from his circle.”
According to the Microsoft co founder, he met Antonova at a bridge tournament, while he met the second Russian woman, a nuclear physicist, in a business context. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the physicist worked at one of Gates’s companies, though it is unclear whether she had a romantic relationship with the businessman during that period. Her name has not been disclosed.
Gates’s former scientific adviser Boris Nikolic was aware of both extramarital relationships and reportedly informed Epstein about them. The financier later used this knowledge to blackmail Gates, the Journal wrote in 2023, citing informed sources.
“Bridge is like sex”: Gates’s affair with a Russian woman
As RT discovered, Mila Antonova was born in Tolyatti in Russia’s Samara region. Her father worked at an automobile plant and was one of the founders of the public organization Chuvash National Cultural Autonomy of the City of Tolyatti.
From 2000 to 2005, Antonova studied management at the Tolyatti Academy of Management. While at university, she became interested in bridge, which was included in the mathematics curriculum. After graduating, she lived for some time in her hometown before moving to the United States, where she founded a bridge club.
Gates met Antonova around 2010, when she was 20 years old. The Russian player competed against the businessman at a bridge tournament. In a video, Antonova said she failed to beat him but “tried to kick him under the table,” as quoted by The Wall Street Journal. She later told her teacher in Russia that Gates “did not play as well as she had expected.”
RT found an online video lecture by Antonova about bridge. In one slide, she poses with Gates.
“Bridge is like sex: if you do not have a good partner, you should have a good hand,” she joked during the lecture.
According to the Journal, Antonova sought funding to launch an online bridge school called BridgePlanet. She hoped to raise 500,000 dollars for the project in order to “promote bridge by creating high quality educational materials for beginners and experienced players.”
Through Gates’s adviser Nikolic, she was introduced to Epstein. In November 2013, Antonova personally presented her project to the financier at his townhouse in New York. She later sent him a letter thanking him for the meeting. The American did not invest in her project but later paid for her programming courses. Antonova told the Journal that the money was transferred directly to the school.
“I do not know why he did it. When I asked, he said something like he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could,” Antonova said.
In 2014, she briefly stayed at Epstein’s New York apartment, but according to her, she did not communicate with the financier or anyone else during that visit. Antonova said she “had no idea” that Epstein was a criminal or that he might have had “hidden motives.”
“I simply thought he was a successful businessman who wanted to help. I am horrified by Epstein and what he did,” Antonova told the Journal.
Blackmail allegations involving Gates
Sources cited by the newspaper claimed that in 2017 Epstein sent Gates an email demanding reimbursement for Antonova’s tuition at the programming school. The amount was described as “insignificant,” but the tone of the message suggested that Epstein knew about Gates’s relationship with the Russian woman and could expose it, according to the publication’s sources.
In the same year, Epstein wrote to Gates’s adviser Boris Nikolic about what he described as the Microsoft founder’s stinginess, accusing him of leaving his former Russian lover, presumably Antonova, “without a penny.”
“Your friend Bill is crazy. His former girlfriend cannot afford air conditioning, cannot afford to travel to play bridge,” the financier wrote to Nikolic.
He claimed that the woman was sleeping “on a friend’s couch” and was in serious need of money. Epstein said that the Russian woman had emailed him and that he had allegedly sent her “a little” money as a result.
“She is fine but broke. This story would eclipse Trump on the front pages of newspapers,” the financier asserted.
In new files related to the Epstein case, published by the US Department of Justice at the end of January, draft emails were found that the financier had allegedly sent to himself in 2013, posing as Gates’s adviser. The messages claimed that Gates had supposedly contracted a sexually transmitted disease after “sex with Russian girls” and asked for antibiotics to “secretly pass” to his then wife Melinda.
A representative for Gates called this information “absolutely absurd and completely false.” According to him, Epstein was frustrated by the lack of ongoing contact with the Microsoft co founder and therefore sought to “trap him and damage his reputation.”
Epstein reportedly wanted Gates to become a principal donor to his multi billion dollar charitable foundation. Several meetings were held between Gates and the controversial financier on the matter, but Gates ultimately declined to participate in Epstein’s project.
The businessman said he ended contact with Epstein in 2014, although he continued to receive emails from him, which he left unanswered.
Bill and Melinda Gates were married from 1994 to 2021. Melinda cited her husband’s infidelities and his ties to Epstein as reasons for their divorce. After their separation, she said in an interview that she was unhappy about her former husband’s meetings with Epstein and had “made that clear.”
According to her, she once met the financier herself to “see what kind of person he was,” but “regretted it from the moment she stepped through the door.”
“He was abhorrent, the embodiment of evil. After that, I had nightmares,” Melinda Gates said.
