Forums mIRC Help unable to send messages in cyrillic

Hello,
I am having very strange broblems with the latest version of mirc.
Messages typed in cyrillic or other non-latin scripts are being sent
as a sequence of question marks like ???????????
I can see all incoming messages without any problems. I can
also see the text in the edit box as I type it, but as soon as message
is sent, it turns into ??????????? stuff.
The russian locale is installed. mIRC is configured to use font with
Cyrillic encoding. I am using Windows XP SP1.

Please help!

Thanks,

Vadim