In an attempt to calm fears of a new cold war, one of Moscow’s most powerful figures has said that Russia will not attack any of its neighbours and has no claim over any of the states it lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Sergei Ivanov, deputy to Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, promised that Russia’s intentions were entirely peaceful despite its invasion of Georgia. Moscow officials insist that its military operations in August were provoked by Georgian aggression.

“We are not aggressive,” Ivanov said in an interview. “We have recognised the territorial integrity of all former Soviet republics. That was in 1991. Russia, of course, has no territorial ambitions regarding any former Soviet countries.

“We are not going to start a war or attack any country. Right now, in fact, Russia isn’t fighting any war at all. If you analyse how many wars the United States and Britain are fighting, it’s quite different.”

Relations between Russia and the West froze during the summer after Georgian troops attacked the pro-Russian enclave of South Ossetia. Moscow immediately launched a counter-offensive, sending its tanks into Georgia.

The action was widely condemned in the West and prompted fears that Russia harboured expansionist ambitions. Ivanov strongly rejected this but said Russia would seek to put Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian president, on trial before an international court.

He claimed Washington was partly to blame for the conflict. “For years we warned the Americans that it was very risky to arm the Georgians,” he said. Ivanov, who was defence minister for six years, added: “We were given guarantees by the Americans that nothing like this would happen. But it did.”

Ivanov, a close ally of Putin since the two served together in St Petersburg’s KGB headquarters in the early 1970s, said that although Russia remained opposed to Georgia’s application to join Nato, officials would not try to stop it: “We don’t understand it but it’s a decision for the Georgian people. Georgia is a sovereign state; that’s indisputable.”

Ivanov, who is seen as a hawk by many in the West, also attacked Nato’s expansion eastwards and criticised US plans to station parts of a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. He warned that Russia would respond militarily should the plans go ahead. But he dismissed a threat made by a Russian general who had warned that Poland was exposing itself to nuclear attack by agreeing to the shield.

“Russia will definitely react because we can’t just not react,” said Ivanov, who as a teenager spent several weeks studying English in London.

“In a few years a new military threat will be very close to our borders. But that doesn’t mean, of course, that we are planning a nuclear attack on the Czech Republic or Poland. That’s total rubbish.”

Ivanov’s message is in contrast to angry statements made during and after the conflict by Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president. Putin even accused America of using military personnel in the fighting.

Ivanov’s conciliatory tone comes as Russia seeks to repair some of the damage to its relations with the West. Its stock market, one of the hardest hit by the financial crisis, began to plunge in August, before other world markets, because of the Georgian clash.

Russia is still trying to join the World Trade Organisation and is hoping that victory by Barack Obama in next month’s American presidential election could revive relations with the United States.

Mark Franchetti reports on Russia for Panorama on BBC1 at 8.30pm tomorrow

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