Disappearance of Darya Bulba
Disappearance of a Ukrainian woman in 2016
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Background
Daria Bulba was born in 1995 in Odesa, Ukraine. She studied at the Odesa College of Hotel Management, where she majored in law, took modeling courses,[6][1] vocal lessons, and learned to play guitar.[4] She also attended a local modeling school, apparently having dreamt of becoming a famous model since childhood.
In 2013, Bulba began modelling professionally, shooting for catalogs. A few years later she began travelling throughout Europe, including Italy, Greece, and Turkey.[2][3][7] On April 7, 2016, Bulba flew to China to work on a contract with the Shanghai-based BYS Model Agency.[1]
Disappearance
On August 5, 2016, Bulba spoke to her mother about upcoming work plans, stating that she may not be able to stay in touch due to the cost of roaming calls in the area. As a result, Bulba's family were not immediately concerned by her lack of contact, only beginning to question where she had gone around August 7, 2016.[8][9]
When questioned by Bulba's family, her roommates claimed she had gone to meet an unknown man the night before and disappeared.[9][10] The last known sighting of Bulba was caught on surveillance cameras between 5 and 6 AM on August 6, 2016, which recorded her listening to music and dancing near the Oriental Pearl Tower, before turning the corner into a blind spot and disappearing.[11][12]
Upon examining Bulba's phone, Chinese police found that she was receiving regular calls from unknown numbers. As reported by her friends, a stranger had been scheduling meetings with her at the hotel, but would never arrive.
Investigation
Bulba's relatives appealed to Interpol as well as local authorities, with her father emailing letters to central TV channels across Ukraine asking for help in finding his missing daughter, but none responded. Chinese police maintain that Bulba was likely under the influence of alcohol which caused her to accidentally fall into the nearby pier's waters and drown.[8] However, search and rescue divers sent to the scene were never able to recover Bulba's body.[9]
As of early 2026, the case of Darya Bulba's disappearance has remained open.[8]
Influence
Bulba's case has been covered by various journalists and online true crime influencers, though none of their proposed theories regarding the model's disappearance have been validated. These theories range from drowning to kidnapping by criminal gangs and human trafficking.[9][13]
Local Ukrainian press have also written about the missing woman, with one newspaper attempting to link her disappearance to the arrest of Hou Jianwen, a well-known space industry specialist in China accused of espionage. The newspaper's journalists put forward a theory that Hou recruited beautiful young women as part of a honey trap scheme, suggesting that Bulba may have been one of them, but this theory is believed to be baseless sensationalism.[9]