The Soviets developed the Molyniya series of satellites back in the early 1960s when they lacked a booster powerful enough to put satellites into GEO. The Moly series of satellites also addressed another factor - they offer much better coverage of the far northern latitudes in much of the Soviet Union. GEO satellites have a harder time covering those high latitudes.

It's an interesting system. The Moly satellites are in highly eliptical semisynchronous (12 hour) orbits inclined about 61 degrees to the equator. The orbits are designed to give about 8 hours of coverage, so 3 of them are launched into the same orbital plane to provide continuous coverage. One downside of this setup is that it requires ground stations to have 2 tracking antennas instead of the simplier fixed antennas used for GEO satellites. As one satellite begins to drop out of coverage, the other antenna picks up the next satellite in the orbit.

The Moly satellites have to be pretty rugged because they're constantly passing through the van Allen belts. However, the Russians have been launching these satellites for about 40 years and they know how to make them work.

They launch these satellites on the SL-06 Molyniya booster (a Soyuz booster with an additional upper stage). Given the high latitude of the old Soviet launch sites (Balkinor AKA Tyuratam is at 49 degrees north latitude, but due to launch constraints, the minimum inclination they launch into is about 51 degrees), the orbital plane change required for a GEO orbit requires a lot of energy. They commonly use the Proton booster for GEO launches. There are two primary versions of the Proton - one for LEO launches like to the ISS and one with an upper stage to put satellites into GTO. The basic Proton can put about 20 metric tons into LEO. However, the energy requirements for a GEO launch are such that the upper stage weighs roughly 18 metric tons, leaving 2 tons for the satellite.