- Fixed very rare volume corruption when a pod is deleted while kubelet is offline. ([#102059](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/102059), [@jsafrane](https://github.com/jsafrane))

  - Better detection of installed CRI.
  - Better output for image pull errors.
- Improved air-gapped and offline support
  - kubeadm now handles air-gapped environments by using the local client version as a fallback.
  - Some kubeadm commands are now allowed to work in a completely offline mode.
- Certificate handling improvements:
  - Renew certs as part of upgrade.

- Fix concurrent map access causing panics when logging timed-out API calls. (#106113, @marseel) [SIG API Machinery]
- Fixed very rare volume corruption when a pod is deleted while kubelet is offline.
  Retry FibreChannel devices cleanup after error to ensure FC device is detached before it can be used on another node. (#102656, @jsafrane) [SIG API Machinery, CLI, Cloud Provider, Cluster Lifecycle, Instrumentation and Storage]

* Fix clustered datastore name to be absolute. ([#54438](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/54438), [@pshahzeb](https://github.com/pshahzeb))
* Fix `kubeadm upgrade plan` for offline operation: ignore errors when trying to fetch latest versions from dl.k8s.io ([#54016](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/54016), [@praseodym](https://github.com/praseodym))

* Fix iptables FORWARD policy for Docker 1.13 in kubernetes-worker charm ([#54796](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/54796), [@Cynerva](https://github.com/Cynerva))
* Fix `kubeadm upgrade plan` for offline operation: ignore errors when trying to fetch latest versions from dl.k8s.io ([#54016](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/54016), [@praseodym](https://github.com/praseodym))

### Other (Cleanup or Flake)

- Allow CSI drivers to just run offline expansion tests (#102665, @gnufied) [SIG Storage and Testing]

## Dependencies

### Added
_Nothing has changed._

### Changed
- golang.org/x/text: v0.3.4 → v0.3.6

### Removed

### New alpha features

* kube-scheduler can now schedule DaemonSet pods ([ref](https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/548))
* You can now resize PersistentVolumes without taking them offline ([ref](https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/531))
* You can now set a maximum volume count ([ref](https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/554))