Can you retry with setting the "encoding" attribute of the file to
"cp1251"? That should work and that should be the appropriate method to
avoid the problem.

test_logging.py in the Python distribution has a test which exercises
Unicode functionality using cp1251, does that test work in your environment?

logging to file is OK (since 2.6.2), logging to console __was__ OK (2.6.1), not now (2.6.2)

shamil