Automated cherry pick of #94666: Handle nil elements when sorting, instead of panicking

[ialidzhikov]

Cherry pick of #94666 on release-1.17.

#94666: Handle nil elements when sorting, instead of panicking

For details on the cherry pick process, see the cherry pick requests page.

[k8s-ci-robot]

Hi @ialidzhikov. Thanks for your PR.

I'm waiting for a kubernetes member to verify that this patch is reasonable to test. If it is, they should reply with /ok-to-test on its own line. Until that is done, I will not automatically test new commits in this PR, but the usual testing commands by org members will still work. Regular contributors should join the org to skip this step.

Once the patch is verified, the new status will be reflected by the ok-to-test label.

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[ialidzhikov]

/kind bug
/cc @hasheddan

[soltysh]

/lgtm
/approve
@kubernetes/release-managers for pick approval

[k8s-ci-robot]

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by: ialidzhikov, soltysh

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• staging/src/k8s.io/kubectl/OWNERS [soltysh]

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[ialidzhikov]

/cc @kubernetes/release-managers

[cpanato]

/priority important-soon