Signs of the question instead of Russian letters and does not write Russian letters in the database.
Here is an example code that makes a selection of a news list from a database:
  public static function getList( $numRows=1000000, $order="publicationDate DESC" ) {
    $conn = new PDO( DB_DSN, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD );
    $sql = "SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS *, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(publicationDate) AS publicationDate FROM articles
            ORDER BY " . $conn->quote($order) . " LIMIT :numRows ";
    $st = $conn->prepare( $sql );
    $st->bindValue( ":numRows", $numRows, PDO::PARAM_INT );
    $st->execute();
    $list = array();
    while ( $row = $st->fetch() ) {
      $article = new Article( $row );
      $list[] = $article;
    }
    $sql = "SELECT FOUND_ROWS() AS totalRows";
    $totalRows = $conn->query( $sql )->fetch();
    $conn = null;
    return ( array ( "results" => $list, "totalRows" => $totalRows[0] ) );
  }
$conn->query( "SET CHARSET utf8" ); - Does not help
mysql:charset=utf8; - don`t work
Database structure:
img
