ASTANA, Kazakhstan — The Astana Opera towers over a windswept plaza in this capital on the Central Asian steppe, a near-copy of Moscow’s neoclassical Bolshoi Theater, right down to the sculpture of galloping horses on the roof.

Across a broad avenue stands the tilted, irregular cone of Khan Shatyr, a shopping mall designed as the world’s largest tent. Its roof is supported by a single slanting pole to evoke the nomadic history of the Kazakhs, a Turkic ethnic group slowly reasserting its identity after centuries of Russian rule.

In between stands a fanciful construction all Astana’s own: one of the “ice cities” that dot the freezing capital in winter. Children scoot down ice slides, and at night, ice sculptures glow with candy-colored lights.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union made Kazakhstan an independent state in 1991, it has been cultivating relationships with Russia, its longtime hegemon, and Turkey, which invested early in the new nation and shares some of its cultural roots.