There are also significant differences though. Buran didn't carry its own engines, Energia provided all the launch thrust. The orbital manoeuvring system used LOX/Kerosene instead of MMH/N2O4. Also it was fully automated, its solo launch and landing happened under computer control.
> During the launch of a space shuttle, the roll program was simultaneously accompanied by a pitch maneuver and yaw maneuver.
It's the STS-specific pitch and yaw I'm talking about. And specifically that it happened at the height it would happen at the Cape, whereas energia had a different tower design that would have allowed the roll to happen earlier, for better efficiency.
For Soyuz launches on the other hand they physically rotate the launch pad.
Without roll, all spacecraft from a launch site would be placed on similarly inclined orbits which would be useless.
And the pork barrel project extraordinaire: http://aviationintel.com/yak-141-freestyle-the-f-35b-was-bor...
Lockheed entered into a "partnership" with Yakovlev, copied the blueprints, and dissolved the "partnership", while pocketing hundreds of billions in US government largesse. The end result even looks similar.
See, there are only so many form-factors you can do given a particular set of requirements. In a lot of cases it's just one, this is why all modern passenger planes look very similar — aerodynamics dictate the form as soon as you accept the requirements (safely and cheaply transport people from A to B).
The Shuttle had wings quite larger than the minimum necessary to land. Apparently the reason for that is military's requirement for "polar once around" capability: it had to be able to launch, do one polar orbit and land immediately [1]. Such a maneuver makes it impossible to predict when and where the Shuttle will overfly some (e.g. Soviet) territory. The problem is that while the Shuttle does that orbit, the Earth spins a bit and now you are over ocean. To compensate for that, Shuttle had to have large aerodynamic surfaces so it can fly sideways and land properly. If not for this requirement, Shuttle may had smaller and lighter wings and lower chance of damaging heat proof tiles.
We know that requirement existed because nowadays Shuttle's design documents are declassified. However, I've not seen a single bit of rationale for Buran's shape/wing surface. So it may be the case that it's not just a copycat, but copying without for the sake of keeping up, with no purpose for the copy.
[1]: http://www.airspacemag.com/space/secret-space-shuttles-35318...