It is designed to carry military communications traffic and is a replacement for the Molniya satellites.
In common with the earlier satellites these craft are in molniya orbits, a highly elliptical orbit named after the earlier satellites and giving good coverage of northern Russia.
[2][5] Meridian was launched on 14 November 2012 from Plesetsk Cosmodrome launchpad 43/4 by a Soyuz-2.1a rocket with a Fregat upper stage.
The satellite was then released from the upper stage into a molniya orbit at 14:00 UTC.
It was given the international designator 2012-063A and the United States Space Command assigned it the Satellite Catalog Number 38995.