The problem using the Unicode Signature (BOM) is a PHP bug:
bug.php?id=22108
It usually only happens on Linux servers.
You can change the pages character set by modifying the following meta tags charset property:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
try changing that to:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=KOI8 Unified" />
or:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=KOI8-ru" />