TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran sent its second fleet of warships, including a home-made destroyer, to the Russian territorial waters on Sunday.

The Iranian fleet of warships which includes Joshan (Shield) and Peykan (Arrow) warships and the hi-tech Damavand destroyer is due to berth in Russia's Astarakhan port for a 12-day stay that bears the message of peace and friendship.

Iranian officials had earlier announced that Damavand is due to accompany the Iranian flotilla in the Russia visit.

"Destroyer Damavand will be sent to Russia in the form of a flotilla of warships," Commander of Iran's Northern Naval Fleet Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad told FNA in August.

According to reports, the Russian Navy whose fleet of warships had in August berthed in Iran's Anzali port and staged joint naval drills with Iranian warships invited Tehran to send its warships to Russia's Astarakhan port.

Damavand was also present in the joint naval wargames with Russia.

Iran's home-made destroyer, 'Damavand', joined the country's fleet of warships in the Caspian Sea early March.

Two Iranian Navy warships visited Astrakhan late in June 2013.

The Joshan and Peykan vessels started their mission on June 25, 2013, navigating along the Caspian Sea and the Volga-Don Canal in Russia.

The voyage by the Iranian warships spotlighted expansion of naval cooperation between Tehran and Moscow as almost a month earlier in mid April 2013, a detachment of the Russian Pacific Fleet warships docked in Iran's Southern port city of Bandar Abbas.

The Russian fleet, comprised of Admiral Panteleyev anti-submarine destroyer and two logistic warships of Peresvet and Admiral Novelskoy with a total number of 712 crews, entered the Army's first naval zone in Bandar Abbas on April 21, 2013.

The Iranian army said that the visit was aimed at the consolidation of the relations between Iran and Russia and expansion of military interactions between the two countries in the field of naval security.

By Fars News Agency