Belarus's strongman leader has admitted rigging the country's last presidential election — because, he says, his popularity is so vast that the true margin of victory was unbelievable and had to be lowered.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview published on Thursday that he took 93 percent of the vote in the country's 2006 presidential polls, but had the number reduced for "psychological" reasons.

"I gave the order for it to be not 93 percent, but something around 80, I can't remember how much. Because when you get over 90, this is not accepted psychologically. But it was the truth," he told the Russian daily Izvestia.

Official results had Lukashenko winning 83 percent of the vote in the 2006 election in the ex-Soviet republic, which was condemned as undemocratic by Western election observers.

Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, has been dubbed "Europe's last dictator" by Washington for his authoritarian style of rule.

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AFP

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