ERROR: Setting of MySQLi init command

Hi, happy user of the backwpup here.
Recently since last week backup fails on DB backup and so far I blame it on hosting service. But I can’t find a reason for it.

Error I get is: ERROR: Setting of MySQLi init command “SET NAMES utf8;” failed.

Finally I found out how to make it work – by commenting part of code in class-mysqldump.php that sends “MYSQLI_INIT_COMMAND, ‘SET NAMES ‘” and “MYSQLI_OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, 5”. When these two are commented then DB backup works fine.

Do you have any hints how to find out what is wrong, and how to make it work ‘in a nice way’?

https://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/backwpup/