Have heard almost nothing about the dry conditions in Russia this summer.  My parent in laws just arrived from Russia, they are from the Black sea region, Rostov on Don.  They say it has been exceptionally hot and dry all spring and summer.  THey took a trip into the Ukraine recently, said the crops were complete failures, they stopped a few places and couldn't even find heads.  Their news is full of stories of farmers with no crop to harvest, interviews on TV etc.  They haven't seen a big area, but where they have been is some of the best soil anywhere.  I checked the drought monitor which was linked to in the China post, and this is what I found:

 

http://drought.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/drought.html?map=%2Fwww%2Fdrought%2Fweb_pages%2Fdrought.map&program=%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmapserv&root=%2Fwww%2Fdrought2%2F&map_web_imagepath=%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_imageurl=%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_template=%2Fdrought.html

That is on a 3 month time scale. Looks quite widespread in the bread basket of the South, into Ukraine, plus Kazakhstan.

As for the timing, the Winter wheat would be already harvested in the very south, likely still working North.  Sunflowers, corn would be a while yet in the south.  I've never seen any soybeans in the Rostov region, mainly wheat and sunflowers, with a little barley, rapeseed, corn.