Why do set names are in latin1 (by default) and tables are in utf8 (strongly recommended by the installation process)?

If I have Russian language in some table of db, I see the wrong characters, for example, in phpMyadmin. Or should run

set names 'latin1'; select * from `ibf_core_sys_settings_titles`

to see Russian characters.

I'm not clear on what you are referring to. Our software doesn't run a SET NAMES query by default (unless you add sql_charset option to your conf_global.php file). The table definitions in your database utilize your MySQL default table character set and column collation settings, as our CREATE TABLE queries do not define any character set information.

I've just edit conf_global.php like this: $INFO['sql_charset'] = 'utf8';

And everything goes fine in phpMyAdmin and on Board too.