Why crio image pulls are failing after upgrading to 4.17 / 4.16 ?

Issue

• Why image pulls are failing with the error message "pulling image: rpc error: code = Canceled desc = writing blob: storing blob to file "/var/tmp/container_images_storagexxxxxxxxx/x": happened during read: context canceled" after upgrading to OCP 4.17 / 4.16 ?
• Multus cni plugins pod fails with the following error message after upgrade

$ oc describe po multus-additional-cni-plugins-97r87:
Events:
  Type     Reason   Age                     From     Message
  ----     ------   ----                    ----     -------
  Warning  Failed   85m (x375 over 21h)     kubelet  (combined from similar events): Failed to pull image "quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev@sha256:46cafafa705714cc7681a5d1fe2c43f96cb55e5b5ce711095a9e8a521d09167d": rpc error: code = Canceled desc = writing blob: storing blob to file "/var/tmp/container_images_storage3994444357/1": happened during read: context canceled
  Normal   Pulling  25m (x65 over 5h58m)    kubelet  Pulling image "quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev@sha256:46cafafa705714cc7681a5d1fe2c43f96cb55e5b5ce711095a9e8a521d09167d"
  Normal   BackOff  37s (x1458 over 5h57m)  kubelet  Back-off pulling image "quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-v4.0-art-dev@sha256:46cafafa705714cc7681a5d1fe2c43f96cb55e5b5ce711095a9e8a521d09167d"