[TYPO3] russian / cyrillic : Problems with graphical text

[Matthias Mark]

I have to add a Russian language version to a multilingual website (tree
concept).

If I write cyrillic the text in the frontend is ok but in the backend there
is
something like П and you can't work with it anymore.

I read it's possible to set the charset of the whole typ3 project to utf-8.
But I cant't set the database to utf-8 and thus I can't use that method.

So I tried another possibility setting the backend user-setting to russian
and
adding the following to the template:
config {
   metaCharset = windows-1251
   renderCharset = windows-1251
   language = ru
   locale_all = ru_RU.CP1251
}

This works fine as long as I don't use graphical text.
Instead of displaying the russian text in cyrillic letters there is e.g.
Ïàðàïëàíû.
I think that is the text stored in the database. As long as I use plain text
on the website it is "translated" by the websites charset.
But how can I tell typo3 to generate graphical text in gmenu and gifbuilder
correctly?
May be  there is a possibilty to set the charset in the typoscript setup
where I build the gmenu or another graphical text.