It is fairly widely accepted to have been the safer of the two shuttle designs. The issues that the US shuttles ran into were addressed in the design of the Buran. The Buran didn't have debris from its own launch vehicle raining down on top of it for example.

The only reason they discontinued the program was because of the expense, and because they didn't really have a use for it. It was the smart call, though the smarter call would have been to never make it in the first place. The Shuttle probably set US space exploration back by decades, marvel (albeit flawed) of engineering that it was.