Disclosing details of the joint mission with Norway and other unspecified allies, British Defence Secretary John Healey said there was no evidence the Russian vessels had damaged the subsea infrastructure.

The UK minister said he was revealing the operation, which involved British warships and military aircraft, to "call out this Russian activity" and send Russian President Vladimir Putin a message.

"We see your activity over our cables and our pipelines and you should know that any attempt to damage them will not be tolerated and will have serious consequences," he told a Downing Street news conference.

Healey said he had deployed Britain's armed forces "to track and to deter any malign activity by these vessels", adding Putin's purpose was "secret operations that remain undetected over our critical infrastructure".

"We've exposed those covert operations. We've made clear to him and his submarines that we've watched them every step of the way."

Britain and its allies tracked an Akula-class Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine and two specialist submarines from Russia's Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research (GUGI), the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

GUGI is among Russia's most secret facilities, responsible for sub-surface ocean monitoring and atomic-powered, deep-water mini spy subs, according to defence experts.

Alongside details and photos of the tracking mission, the MoD published a declassified image of the GUGI vessels docked at Russia's Barents Sea naval base Olenya.

- 'Exposed' -

The Russian attack sub was "a likely decoy to distract" from the two specialist vessels, which are "designed to survey underwater infrastructure during peacetime and sabotage it in conflict", Healey told reporters.

They "spent time over critical infrastructure relevant to us and our allies in the North Atlantic," he noted, with UK warships dropping sonar buoys "to demonstrate to them that we were monitoring".

"We wanted to ensure that we could warn them that their covert operation had been exposed and reduce the risk that they may attempt any action that could damage our pipelines or our cables," the defence secretary said.

"I'm confident we have no evidence that there has been any damage."

The mission involving around 500 British personnel saw UK aircraft fly more than 450 hours while a navy frigate covered several thousand nautical miles, Healey said.

Separately, he responded to criticism in the Daily Telegraph that London was not making good on recent threats to stop vessels from Russia's sanctions-busting "shadow fleet" from transiting through UK waters.

It followed the newspaper photographing a Russian frigate escorting at least one sanctioned Russian-linked tanker through British waters this week without interference from the UK navy.

"We have the military options and we're ready ... to interdict shadow fleet vessels," Healey said.

He added London's stance was "making Russia reroute its shadow ships ... or escort its shadow ships with its own warships" and thereby "making it harder for Putin to pursue his illegal oil revenues".

"We aim, with others, to put more pressure in the coming weeks and months on that activity."