Openfire database and russian characters when using webchat

I am having some problems with characters such as ‘¸’ and come russian characters when using fastpath webchat.

I have changed my databse to utf-8 recommended from the following like

http://www.igniterealtime.org/builds/openfire/docs/latest/documentation/database .html

I have changed this but still having an issue. I have a couple of question regarding the openfire database.

Why does the database need to be changed?

How is the database used in fastpath webchat?

I don’t think its a database issue because when I debug through the fastpath source it seems to fail to get a response from the server. Apart from changing the database to use utf-8. Is there anything else I can change in openfire to ensure russian characters work?

Thanks