How to set default connection character set for php mysql

I have a small problem. I have russian characters in a database and I want to avoid setting character_set_results to utf8 all the time. Is there a way to hard set that ?

mysql_query("set character_set_results='utf8'"); 

I want to avoid this line and hard开发者_高级运维 set it.

Thank you

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

For czech language I use:

mysql_query("set names latin2 collate latin2_czech_cs")

Don't forget to set the proper collation too!