There is a possibility to write such programs without utf8-capable editor at all.
perldoc encoding from 5.8.0 perl gives an example:

# an alternate way, Filter
use encoding "euc-jp", Filter=>1;
use utf8;
# now you can use kanji identifiers -- in euc-jp!
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I tried using Russian locale, and it works! I was able to name identifiers using mentioned locale:

use encoding 'cp1251', Filter=>1;
use utf8;
my $ÿÿ="eqweq";
print $ÿÿ;
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Courage, the Cowardly Dog