Using kubernetes 1.21 and istio 1.11.3

I have an istio-enabled namespace, into which I create the following Pod via kubectl create -f mypod.yaml where mypod.yaml as below:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: command-demo
  labels:
    purpose: demonstrate-command
spec:
  containers:
  - name: command-demo-container
    image: debian
    command: ["printenv"]
    args: ["HOSTNAME", "KUBERNETES_PORT"]
  restartPolicy: Never

The pod ends up in a NotReady state

NAME                                            READY   STATUS       RESTARTS   AGE
command-demo                                    1/2     NotReady     0          41m

Why is this happening?

My assumption is that this could be related to the following containerStatuses

  containerStatuses:
  - containerID: containerd://121a8cb31bed60048116d45d0c500d5e3e11e41d790cdc4b506d37a9cb036e4f
    image: docker.io/library/debian:latest
    imageID: docker.io/library/debian@sha256:2906804d2a64e8a13a434a1a127fe3f6a28bf7cf3696be4223b06276f32f1f2d
    lastState: {}
    name: command-demo-container
    ready: false
    restartCount: 0
    started: false
    state:
      terminated:
        containerID: containerd://121a8cb31bed60048116d45d0c500d5e3e11e41d790cdc4b506d37a9cb036e4f
        exitCode: 0
        finishedAt: "2022-01-02T17:23:04Z"
        reason: Completed
        startedAt: "2022-01-02T17:23:04Z"
  - containerID: containerd://5d0defc42b32c62c421b8328b8d177c12a042ba98c4e666b96e999be569478bd
    image: docker.io/istio/proxyv2:1.11.3
    imageID: docker.io/istio/proxyv2@sha256:28513eb3706315b26610a53e0d66b29b09a334e3164393b9a0591f34fe47a6fd
    lastState: {}
    name: istio-proxy
    ready: true
    restartCount: 0
    started: true
    state:
      running:
        startedAt: "2022-01-02T17:23:04Z"
  hostIP: 10.8.1.9

The (main) container exits, but the istio sidecar is still reported as running.

Is this behaviour normal / expected? Any way for a graceful pod shutdown in such istio-enabled namespaces / use-cases?

P.S. Why is containerStatuses[0].started = false since it is reported as state.terminated ?