IT was news worthy of a spy thriller — a Russian espionage ring uncovered in a suburban shopping outlet in the Irish capital.

In 1983 the Government, under Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald, exposed that the KGB had been working from Stillorgan ­Shopping Centre in Dublin to trade information about the US.

4 The Stillorgan Shopping Centre, where three Russian spies were traced back to

And a new radio ­documentary has said this was not the only link between Ireland and the Russian secret service.

Journalist Robert Mulhern reveals there are several instances as Russia used tensions between Ireland and Britain to their advantage.

In 1972, a shipment filled with ammunition, including two machine guns and 70 rifles, set sail from ­Russia to a location 90km off the Northern Irish coast.

They were being sent to Irish revolutionary Michael O’Riordan, who was preparing for conflict in the North against the Brits. He made the request to the Russians on behalf of two IRA figures, Seamus Costello and Cathal Goulding.

Just over a decade later, the country was left reeling when it emerged three people were being expelled for spying.

They had been working as diplomats in the embassy in Rathgar but using Irish radio to send coded messages back to Moscow, before Irish intelligence officers tricked them into handing over information in Stillorgan Shopping Centre.

Former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Jim O’Keeffe was the man who had to deliver the news of their expulsion, which he said was “a first”, adding “certainly to me but in fact it had never happened in the history of the country”.

4 Former Taoiseach Dr. Garrett Fitzgerald whose Government exposed that the KGB where working from the Stillorgan ­Shopping Centre

Viktor Lipasov and his wife Irina were two of the accused, with authorities saying they had travelled to Donegal to meet with the IRA and to send intelligence cables to Soviet submarines.

O’Keeffe added: “I also was to make it clear that the wife was not being expelled merely because she was a wife, she was directly mentioned as also having been involved in unacceptable activities.

“There was subsequently a story about Donegal. I was merely delivering a message on behalf of the Government of Ireland that these three people had to leave the country.”

However, Lipasov denied the allegations at the time and said his “main business was issuing visas”.

4 Pianist Derek Conlon's unbelievable connection to former Russian secret service agent Alexander Litvinenko, whose murdere made headlines around the world, is also explored in the documentary

He added: “I was expelled without any grounds and I didn’t violate the laws of this country.”

But perhaps the most bizarre connection between this country and the KGB was when Dublin pianist Derek Conlon was connected to one of the most notorious murders.

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Alexander Litvinenko was a former secret service agent who met with two past KGB agents in the Millennium Hotel, London.

During that time he was poisoned with radionuclide polonium-210 and later died from the radioactive poison.

His case became world news as his widow Marina accused Moscow of orchestrating the murder.

Derek Conlon had arrived to work at the hotel as normal when the news broke of Litvinenko’s death.

He went to the doctor for a check-up, where his radiation levels were deemed to be “a little high” despite not having been there when the poisoning happened.

4 The Headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the former KGB, in Moscow

Police informed him the poisoned cup Litvinenko drank from was washed in a dishwasher but it did not kill all the poison.

He said: “I drank from the coffee cup that was contaminated and then it turns out it is all over my clothes, all over the piano.

"People would come to the bar, it wasn’t for the music it was for the curiosity because people wanted to see, ‘that’s the fella, he glows in the dark that fella,’ it was a kind of freak show.”

But Derek said he got paranoid the Russians were after him and left for a job in Barbados.

IRELAND and the KGB will air today on RTE Radio 1 at 2pm.