Russian characters on terminal (howto?)

[paolo pedaletti <paolop@matapp.unimib.it>]

Ciao,
there is a conference here in university and some visitors are from
Russia.
When they connect their host in .ru and read mail with pine (*on remote
host*) they can't read the text with the right characters.
I suspect that ssh/telnet export some variable that doesn't permit them
to read the mail propre properly.
I have de-comment the line in /etc/locale.gen:
ru_RU.KOI8-R KOI8-R
ru_UA KOI8-U

and re-run locale-gen.
No changes.

Any hint?
How can I resolve this problem?
TNX.

-- 

Paolo Pedaletti, Como, ITALYa     www.fastflow.it/~paolop
paolop@matapp.unimib.it           ICQ: 4755831