Russia’s deputy prime minister said Wednesday that his country’s military actions in Georgia were comparable to the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attack on America.

Sergei Ivanov told British Broadcasting Corp. he was surprised at international condemnation of Russia’s offensive against its small, pro-Western neighbor. He said Georgia’s attempt to regain control of the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force left Russia with no choice.

“We didn’t think that we annoyed anybody,” Ivanov told BBC World News from Moscow. “We just reacted because we didn’t have any other option. Any civilized country would act same way. I may remind you, September the 11th, the reaction was similar. American citizens were killed. You know the reaction.”

Ivanov also criticized British Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s suggestion that the Georgia crisis showed Russia could not accept that the Soviet era was over.

Miliband earlier told BBC radio that “the sight of Russian tanks rolling into parts of a sovereign country on its neighboring borders will have brought a chill down the spine of many people.”

“It is not in Russia’s interests to continue to hanker for a Soviet past because, frankly, it’s gone and it’s good that it’s gone,” Miliband said.

Ivanov said the idea that Russia yearned to restore the Soviet Union was “total rubbish _ to use a proper English word.”

Relations between Russia and Britain have been strained in recent years, particularly since the radiation poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. Russian emigres blame Moscow for the death.